


The Serpent's Tail

by stele3



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Amputation, Author is striving for historical accuracy, Canon-Typical Violence, Demisexual Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Eating Disorders, Gen, Immortal Wives Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Meet-Ugly, Mentions of Slavery, Panic Attacks, Past Yusuf/OMC, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Religious Conflict, Religious Discussion, Religious Fanaticism, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Suicidal Thoughts, Vomiting, Yusuf/OFC - Freeform, food as self-harm, sex as self-harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 97,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25875478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: Version 3382 of how they met.-o-I am a white Christian person trying to write with historical accuracy about subjects that include non-white, non-Christian people. Please know that if I fuck up, it's not intentional, and I'd welcome any criticisms you have.Each chapter will have specific warnings in the notes. Again, if you think I should have warned for something else in the chapter, please let me know.I am on Tumblr under the same name, and Twitter at stele_3
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 225
Kudos: 316





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jerusalem
> 
> -o-
> 
> When Nicolò goes into Jerusalem, he witnesses the slaughter perpetrated by Crusaders, including some instances of rape. If you'd like to skip this section, it starts at: "Then he goes into the city of God" and continues until Yusuf's section.

They have given Nicolò two assistants, one to span the second crossbow as he fires the first and another to hold a shield in front of them. Their names are Tonso and Nicolò, and they are fifteen and thirteen, respectively. Tonso has the boisterous demeanor of a young man desperate to outgrow his spots, and Nicolò is small, quiet, and did not notice when his new master smiled at his name. 

They call him Padre Giacomo, the name given to him when he took vows, and cluster near him on the boat. Among the three hundred men and assorted assistants are hired mercenaries, those rough men who have joined the Princes’ Crusade for glory and riches, and more than one makes advances towards the boys, only driven away by the stare that Padre Giacomo once leveled at the more egregious and repeated sinners of his parish. 

Technically he is no longer a priest, not since he took up the cross, but Nicolò finds that the reflexive guilt which strikes the heart of even the most unrepentant sinners when they fall under the gaze of a priest is a most effective psychological tactic. 

When he is not protecting them, he spends the passage doing what he can to improve his charges. Nicolò the Smaller--as he calls the boy in the privacy of his own mind--hasn’t even been baptized, which Nicolò attends to forthwith, and neither of them properly know their prayers. Tonso has little patience for instruction at first, until an argument between two of the mercenaries leads to one of them cutting the other’s throat. The killer is thrown overboard, but Tonso saw the whole thing and spends the remainder of their passage plastered to Padre Giacomo’s side.

“When he died, his eyes were so empty,” he whispers fretfully. 

“Fear not, Antonio, for though the body may die the spirit lives on with Christ,” Nicolò tells him. “Whoever believes in God shall not perish but have eternal life.”

“Even Giuseppe?” pipes up Nicolò the Smaller, meaning the killer.

“No,” Nicolò says, thinking of Giuseppe’s hand gripping Tonso’s shoulder four days into their sea voyage. “Not him. He died without repenting of his sinful ways.” Seeing their uncertain expressions, he spread his hands to them both, touching their heads. “Fear not, for those who undertake this journey eagerly shall be granted the remission of all our sins and the rewards of imperishable glory in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The words come to him from the mouth of _Il Papa_. Normally Nicolò wouldn’t take the word of a Normaund, even one bearing the seal of the Holy See, but the purpose he has set before them--a journey to aid their Christian brethren oppressed by heretics and heathens, a crusade to free the Holy Land and make it once again a place of pilgrimage--is something that Nicolò believes down to his bones. 

Something draws him to the Holy Land. He feels it--the hand of God, outstretched, beckoning Nicolò to join Him. 

-o-

If the mercenaries among their ranks were trouble, the rabble army that they meet in Jaffa is a thousand times worse. They are filthy and sick, half-starved. Some of them have been marching for two years and whispers tell of those among them who resorted to cannibalism outside the gates of Antioch, eating the bodies of dead pagans even down to the children. Their leaders squabble, their bishops gaze at the horizon instead of tending to the wounded at their feet, and bitter provincial divides threaten the unity of their cause. Many in their ranks sneer at the newcomers, even as the Genoese dismantle their ships to build siege towers; the Holy Army has attempted to take the city once already and failed, driven back by the inner wall. 

A month passes this way as they creep closer to Jerusalem. Nicolò, who had been outfitted by a wealthy and pious donor of his parish, finds himself steadily picked clean. He is no hoarder, what he has he willingly shares with all those who _ask_ , but many do not bother. The only things he guards closely are his two crossbows and his flock of two. 

At last: they see the walls. Nicolò spends some time gazing at them. The pulling sensation inside of him is stronger here, strong enough that he has to still his feet rather than race forward. Everything in him wishes to hurry towards God, howsoever that path takes him. He has long since reconciled himself to death: he has come close to it many times already, as a bony child of no one in the streets of San Francesco d'Albaro and as an even bonier youth grasping at every morsel to feed the pit inside of him. 

He still remembers the night that God delivered him. He had been sick, a cough that would not leave him and caused every door--even the ones who would usually give him a whole loaf of bread--to shut against him in fear of a plague. Alone and shivering with fever, he had curled against a wall under the eaves of a house and shut his eyes, half-convinced that he would never open them again. 

In that state of wretchedness, Jesus himself had come to him. He had looked young, about Nicolò’s age, with dark, curling hair and a gentle smile. Looking at him, Nicolò had known for the first time in his life that someone did love him, that he was not completely alone in the world.

When he had opened his eyes in the morning, his cough had lessened somewhat and he was filled with a holy light. That light has guided him to the priesthood, to take up the cross, and now it has led him here. 

He is not the only one who feels it. A week after their arrival, one of the most influential priests, Peter Desiderius, claims to have had a vision from God. He commands them to fast for three days, then remove their footwear and circle the walls of the city in procession, as did Giosuè outside the walls of Jericho. After that, the city will fall.

Nicolò, who is no stranger to hunger, spends the three days praying and tending to Tonso and Nicolò the Smaller. They shake with nerves and the weakness of their bodies. “Does God bless us, Padre?” Nicolò the Smaller asks on the morning of the third day, when he is dull-eyed with what Nicolò knows very well as the beginning of starvation. 

“He does more,” Nicolò tells the boy. “He loves us.”

They circle the city. Nicolò spends the procession with his eyes on the walls; but the defenders seem more confused by their actions than alarmed. They watch and withhold their missiles. 

After that the battle begins in earnest. Nicolò takes his place alongside his countrymen, picking off defenders from the top of the walls as the swordsmen make their advance. He loses himself to the rhythm of aiming, firing, then turning to trade Tonso for his second, spanned crossbow. In front of him, little Nicolò crouches with his shield, too small to actually provide much cover but mostly decorative at this point. 

With every bolt, Nicolò whispers a prayer. “Pater noster, qui es in cœlis.” He fires, turns, exchanges crossbows with Tonso. “Sanctificatur nomen tuum.” He aims. “Adveniat regnum tuum; fiat voluntas tua, sicut in cœlo, et in terra.” He fires, turns.

When he turns back, the gates of the city have opened. A small force issues forth, not enough, but they make a desperate run for the siege towers, clearly hoping to damage them. Nicolò calls out to his brethren and redirects his aim. 

One of the Saracens races ahead of the others, his head bound in a dark turban and his sword glinting in the sun every time his arm swings upward with his steps. Coolly, Nicolò traces his movement with the sights of his crossbow. When he was learning to handle the weapon, the men training him noted his steadiness and his lack of hesitation. He fires. 

The Saracen falls. “Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie,” Nicolò continues. Tonso isn’t keeping up, struggling to span the secondary crossbow in time to pass it off, so Nicolò spends several minutes readying the crossbow in his hand himself, putting the bolt in place, firing, then turning to accept the second with a stern, priestly look that makes Tonso blush. Ahead of him, Nicolò the Smaller is mouthing along to his prayers, and Nicolò spares a moment to send him a reassuring smile before he raises the crossbow. 

There is a Saracen running directly at him. A few, actually, following in the path of the first. It’s clearly a hopeless charge: the only thing they can do is redirect the fire of the Genoese long enough for their fellows on top of the wall to drive back the Crusaders attempting to breach the wall. Nicolò cannot help but admire their courage. They must know that they are sacrificing their lives in the attempt. 

He draws aim, and--

Wait--

The Saracens all look very much alike in their dark turbans. 

He fires. The attacker falls. “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem: sed libera nos a malo,” he finishes, turning to accept the other crossbow from Tonso. He has lost track of which crossbow is which.

Not enough of Nicolò’s countrymen heard his warning and the charge continues. He fires again and again, picking off the attackers as they draw ever closer. He is near the end of the line, far from those hardened mercenaries who have fought the Venetians in previous battles. Nicolò does not count on them for help. Behind him, Tonso curses as he struggles against exhaustion; Nicolò would reprimand him for taking the Lord’s name in vain at a time when he might die with that on his lips and soul if he but had the time, and--

And then the _same man_ \--it is the same man, Nicolò even watches him pull the last arrow out of his own chest before he staggers back to his feet and resumes running--that same Saracen is only a dozen yards away. His turban still covers his face but Nicolò knows, somehow, that it is him.

He draws aim.

In the corner of his eye, a bolt passes through the head of Nicolò the Smaller.

Nicolò’s attention snaps and he stares in shock as the boy tumbles to the ground, instantly dead. The bolt did not pass through the small shield still dutifully held in his arm, it came from the side, and that is the last coherent thought Nicolò has before there is a hail of arrows all around him.

The rest of the Genoese line has finally noticed the charge and is responding by raining down bolts on their location. None strike Nicolò, and so he is dreadfully coherent as that very particular Saracen steps over Nicolò the Smaller’s body and lunges at him with a wordless shout. 

In the absence of his own sword, Nicolò parries with the crossbow in his hand. It is made of strong, thick wood and does not immediately cleave at the first blow, or the second. He gives ground, backing in a direction that leads the Saracen away from Tonso and the rest of the line. The Saracen pursues, and Nicolò glimpses him in flashes: bloodstained clothes, dark eyes lined with kohl, a sword that slashes swiftly in his hand. He is a creature of nightmares, born of Hell itself, and Nicolò braces himself desperately, parrying as best he can again and again and--

Pain bursts across his throat. His hands, turning nerveless, let slip the crossbow and rise to clutch at his own broken skin as if trying to hold back the flow of blood. Even as he falls to his feet, his mind is filled with prayer. _Asspérges me, Dómine, hyssópo, et mundábor; lavábis me, et super nivem dealbábor…_

…...and then he is awake again. 

He can see his crossbow. It lies next to him in the bloodstained dirt. Nicolò’s whole body buzzes in the way that his arm does, sometimes, when he sleeps on it wrong. He twitches and flops and sucks in breath. His throat hurts--it was--he clutches at it and his fingers come away bloody. He swipes again and again, but underneath the blood his skin is whole. He tugs at it incredulously for a moment then pushes to his hands and knees. 

Around him there is screaming. Nicolò observes it, feeling strangely detached from the moment. The Arabs, improbably, have flanked the Genoese line and are actually attacking them up close. A few of the crossbowmen have fallen, cut down by the swords of the Arabs or the panicked missiles of their brethren. Most keep firing, and Nicolò hears an arrow whiz past his ear as he kneels, staring about him in dazed confusion. 

Then he sees the Saracen.

 _The_ Saracen. The one he shot at least twice. Nicolò can actually see the back of him, now, and the holes left in his armor from Nicolò’s bolts. The blood, staining him. He fights on regardless, slashing at another Genoese, parrying his dagger before driving him through.

Then he turns, and sees Nicolò.

For a long moment they simply stare at one another. Nicolò's whole body tingles; he feels like it is still waking up. From what? From--from what? His throat was cut. He remembers feeling the blood pulse through his fingers with his heartbeat. What happened then? _What happened then?_

The Saracen raises his sword and runs at him.

Nicolò’s hand gropes out. It finds the hilt of a fallen shortsword.

He is no bravo, no hardened mercenary. He learned the crossbow in a few weeks and was noted for his sharp eye and cool head. With the sword, he has no experience. His opponent clearly outmatches him but Nicolò fights on grimly, desperately, until an unexpected boot in his balls doubles him over and then pain explodes in his chest. 

_Miserére mei, Deus: secúndum magnam misericordiam tuam. Glora Patri, et Filii, et Spiritui Sancti._

Then he is awake again

He picks up the sword. 

This time they both die together, in a hail of arrows.

When he wakes, the Saracen is lying on the ground near him, with two arrows in his back. Nicolò plucks one out of his own chest. The sun is low in the sky; they have been fighting for hours. He stands for a while, doubled over and panting, watching the Saracen’s still form. He is tall, Nicolò realizes, taller than the others. That’s how Nicolò recognized him each time. His face is still covered by the turban but something in Nicolò dreads to draw any closer to him, instead standing at a distance and waiting as the sun sinks towards the horizon. 

When the Saracen does not move, Nicolò mumbles the rest of the last rites and then--

Then he goes into the city of God, and sees the river of blood and the bodies and the Christian men forcing themselves on women in the street like animals and the old men dragged from their homes by their bears to have their heads chopped off and…

-o-

After the sixth time he dies, Yusuf wakes alone in a field of battle.

It is night, but still sweltering hot. The sky above him glows orange and smoke stings his throat, makes his chest ache more than it already does. When he struggles to his feet he can see the walls of Jerusalem, and beyond it: fire. The city burns. 

Someone, somewhere, is still fighting, but not nearby. His scimitar lies not far from him, still tacky with blood. It hurts to kneel and grip the handle. His mind tells him that his throat is cut, his side split open, his chest agape; but when he touches those places, the skin is unbroken. Three bolts in his stomach. His hand--his hand was cut off. He squints at it in the dark. The previous five times he hadn’t bothered to stop and wonder at this strangeness: he had seen his prophesied enemy, the Frank from his dreams, and they had fought, killed each other, risen again, killed again. In the precious few moments between their fighting he had thought that God must be lifting him from the dead for this purpose, to kill this barbarian monster before it reached the city walls. 

Now, in the Frank’s absence and the fall of the city, he is not sure.

He starts walking and only stops when he encounters a tree. Then he collapses under it and falls into exhausted sleep. 

He dreams of fire, of terror and exhaustion, of the Frank staggering through blood-soaked streets, weeping.

-o-

It takes another month for them to meet again, in Ashkelon.

The dreams continue. The Frank dies to what Yusuf recognizes as lack of water, then to some disagreement with one of his fellows involving a woman. Yusuf does not have time to wonder at the strangeness of their connections or their continued life: al-Afdal Shahanshah pushes them north to retake al-Quds, and the Franks have taken the bait, riding out of the city walls to face them. 

This time Yusuf is taken by surprise in his sleep, along with the rest of the Fatimid soldiers, if they could be called that. They are Sunni and Shi’a, Arabs and zirid, and the splintering of these divisions undoes them. How the Franks got so close, he does not know, but suddenly their camp is overrun. He wakes to screaming and the thundering of hooves and does not even have time to pull on his armor. 

Already he knows they are lost. Stories about the barbarism of these foreign monsters have spread and no one wants to be butchered as a prisoner. They leave him alone to fight on. An arrow strikes him in the throat and he dies; he rises and kills three others until a knight runs him through. 

He wakes in a pile of bodies. Yusuf feels a familiar one pressed over his and flails out, drawing his knife. A hand claps across his mouth, pressing the cloth of his turban between his teeth. “Shhh,” the Frank hisses, his face twisted in pain. Yusuf has just stabbed him in the side. 

It is instinct to twist the knife—but somewhere above them, there is conversation, followed by the thump of another body landing in the pit with them. Other Franks, from the sound of their harsh language. Yusuf stills and they lie together, frozen, dagger still planted in his Frank’s body. Staggering back to his feet on the battlefield is one thing, but climbing from a pit of the dead would be very fucking noticeable and make them enemies of all. 

Hot, foul-smelling breath brushes across his face, and the man’s filthy palm rests on his lips. Only once the voices overhead have retreated does his Frank reach down. Their fingers slip together, slick with blood, until he takes Yusuf by the wrist and eases the dagger out of his body. It’s a deep but narrow wound, probably not even fatal. By now, Yusuf has a good sense of these things. 

The smell around them is indescribable. It suffuses every part of Yusuf’s consciousness. Now that his senses have, unfortunately, returned, everything else falls away under the desperate need to escape that smell. He pushes the Frank off of him and claws his way to the edge of the pit, but the sides are too steep. He can taste the death as he breathes and he retches mostly blood. 

A hand touches his shoulder. The Frank sways next to him, struggling to keep his footing among the bodies. He knits his fingers together then gestures upward. 

They hesitate there a moment, staring at one another, but the desperation of trapped animals takes over. Yusuf gives him a foot and the Frank boosts him over the side of the pit. It would be cruelty beyond measure not to turn and offer his hand, though he has to plunge his bloody dagger into the ground for leverage in order to not be pulled back in. 

They lie for a time in the yellow dirt beside the pit, panting at the unrelenting blue sky above, before Yusuf staggers to his feet. Judging from the plumes of smoke, they are just north of Ashkelon, not far from the ocean. The Franks retreated inland to hold the high ground and rain missiles down on Ashkelon from the comfort of their camps. If any Fatimid army still exists, it is long since fled this place. 

Behind him there is the sound of a weapon being unsheathed. 

He spins, gripping the dagger. His Frank is on one knee, frowning down at a sword that he has just picked up from the ground; the scabbard still lies at his feet. He turns it one way then another, staring down its length, before he stands again with a wince. Only then does he notice Yusuf’s tension. 

Before the gates of al-Quds, a kind of mania had seized them both. In its grip they’d fought each other and died and risen without stopping for longer than their bodies required to heal. For his part, Yusuf had felt the whole of the oncoming army must be condensed down to this one man, his enemy, his other. 

This is different. He does not know why--perhaps because they have killed one another so many times by now, or because he has seen the man in his dreams, kneeling and whispering prayers. 

Slowly, Yusuf bends and places his dagger on the ground. He does not take his eyes off the Frank as he does so. 

The Frank watches, then simply opens his hand and lets the sword return to the dirt.

They stumble away, directionless at first but then Yusuf remembers a well not far from the Fatimid camp. He goes and his Frank follows, one hand pressed to his ribs.

The well is in an olive grove. Underneath the trees, the hum of insects drowns out human shouts and beyond the branches Yusuf hears the rush of waves. Someone runs past them and he draws up hard, startled; it is a woman and a child, just as startled as he and twice as terrified. The child trips, going to his knees in the scrubby grass between the trees and dropping the bag he carries. The woman turns, drawing her veil across her mouth. Yusuf lifts his hand, pressing one of his palms to his chest in greeting. 

The Frank lurches past him, reaching for the child. The woman screams and Yusuf gropes for a weapon he no longer has. The Frank flinches and looks up at them both, startled in turn. He is on his knees, hands reaching for the loaves of bread that have fallen from the child’s satchel, while the boy stares at him in frozen terror. 

The woman recovers first, darting forward to seize her son by the arm and pull him away. The Frank says something to her in a language that Yusuf doesn’t understand, shoving the loaves of bread into the satchel. He stands, holding it out; but they are gone, running through the trees as fast as their fear can take them. 

The Frank stands in the grove, one hand pressed to the bloody wound on his side and the other still outstretched. Slowly, he drops his arm. 

They reach the well and Yusuf draws up the wooden bucket, not even bothering to pull his turban away before he shoves his face forward to drink. Water pours across his blood-soaked shirt. The gaze of his Frank sits heavy on his shoulders and once he has drunk enough to slake his thirst enough to think, Yusuf turns to meet the man’s eyes. He stands a few feet away, hunched under his metal cowl, watching with an attentiveness that betrays him. 

Yusuf offers him the bucket. His Frank hesitates, clearly expecting a trap--what, Yusuf can’t imagine--but then his thirst overcomes him and he staggers forward, hands clutching the bucket’s sides as he tips it to his face.

Once they have both drunk their fill, the Frank slumps against the side of the well and slides to the ground. His armor clanks; so much metal they wear. It must be exhausting to simply stand up. Yusuf eyes him then asks a question in Arabic, in Sabir, in Greek.

His Frank perks up. “Yes. A little.”

Yusuf touches his chest. “I am Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani.”

“Nicolò.”

“Nicolò?” 

The Frank closes one eye, squinting up at him. “Nicolò di Genoa.”

Yusuf almost drops the bucket. Not a Frank then.

“Genoa,” he says.

Nicolò is busy pulling off his cowl and does not notice Yusuf’s change in mood at first. Underneath his hair is light brown and tousled, hanging nearly to his shoulders. It looks very fine. Of course he has to be fucking handsome underneath the armor. Yusuf kicks his leg and the face Nicolò makes at first is so offended but when he sees the way Yusuf stands, he scrambles up.

“What,” he starts, then breaks off as Yusuf tackles him.

They roll about kicking up dust. In the absence of swords they fight with their hands--at least at first. Gradually, however, Nicolò’s resistance wanes. At first he fights back, breaking Yusuf’s nose; but then his hands grow limp, his body stops thrashing. He lies still and lets Yusuf’s hands close tight around his throat. His eyes darken and redden as his breath grows thin. Almost, almost, Yusuf relents; but then he thinks of his parents.

A fucking Genoese. Of all the fucking things. 

Yusuf had been twenty when ships bearing the red cross of the Genoese navy sailed into the harbor of al-Mahdīyah and burned both the Caliphate fleet in the harbor and parts of the city. His father had taken him to Cairo to meet the network of merchants with whom they did business and by the time they had raced home, the Pisans and Genoese had departed along with the city’s gold; they hadn’t even wanted the city, just payback for the piracy of that idiot whoreson Tamim ibn al-Mu'izz. 

His mother, dead. Burned to death along with their home, too close to the harbor. His father, grief-stricken, soon followed.

The man lying underneath him looks young in death, even purple-faced and covered in blood. Yusuf wipes his nose and sits back, shaking. Yusuf had been twenty, Nicolò couldn’t have been much older. Maybe younger. He could have been the raider who set fire to Yusuf’s mother’s house, but the odds are deeply against it. Unless he did, and Allah has kept them both alive until this moment, to grant Yusuf revenge…he had come to al-Quds on business, his father’s business now his own, but when he heard of the approaching army he had stayed to fight, to protect this beautiful city, and seeing the Genoese cross bearing down on the walls had made him certain that Allah had placed his feet there for a reason. Why else would there be such perfect symmetry to their meeting? The burning of the Caliphate fleet had yielded Baḥr al-Rūm to the Franks, which in turn had made the Crusade possible in the first place.

God is full of gifts but this, strangling a man in an olive orchard, no matter how symmetrical its purpose seems, does not feel like--

A rock connects with Yusuf’s temple and he falls to the side, stunned. Nicolò follows, his still-purple face frozen in a grimace of anguish as he brings the rock down again and again and again--

-o-

Yusuf wakes alone in the olive orchard and knows that he was wrong. 

Ashkelon has fallen. The garrison remains, stubbornly entrenched in the city, and the Franks--or whoever they are--pull back to al-Quds, burning as they go. Yusuf spends a long moment watching the smoke before he turns his face away.

He finds his Genoese-Frank’s belongings by the shoreline and the man himself in the sea. Without his armor, Nicolò is almost comically pale. None of the violence they inflicted on one another has remained, and he is all milky skin stretched over angular joints. The hair of his chest and genitals curls black against that secret skin. 

He is a man after all. Not a monster. Broad at the shoulder but narrow-hipped, lanky with muscle. A wave catches him and he turns into it with his eyes closed and arms open, as if he wishes to embrace the sea. The water lifts him a little before setting him back on his feet. Watching him, Yusuf feels his heart stir. 

It also makes him conscious of the dirt, blood, shit, and other filth that covers his own body. For once, he is dirtier than a Frank. 

The tide is low and has revealed many pools along the shore. Yusuf finds one and sits next to it with his eyes closed, trying to find that place of peace and certainty, before praising God and beginning to wash himself. 

About halfway through he becomes aware of an audience. Well, why not? If the Genoese bastard wants to take revenge, Yusuf has to grimly admit that he’s entitled. No attack comes, though, and Yusuf decides to continue, stripping off his turban and armor and stepping into the knee-high pool. A few fish trapped by the receding waves flop at his feet and he pauses to toss them on the shore. He doesn’t even have a knife to kill them properly, but hopefully Allah will forgive the oversight.

Once he has scrubbed his skin off in the cool water, he turns to find Nicolò seated on his tabard, watching him. A makeshift sling rests at his feet with the bloody rock inside. 

The second that Nicolò sees his face, he goes wide-eyed and very still.

Yusuf eyes him. Briefly, he considers walking away. This is not his land: he is as much a stranger here as the Genoese, compelled to fight first by his love of al-Quds’s beauty, then to settle his personal score. But he is of the faith--albeit a Shi’a--and as a merchant he has traded goods and secrets with people in many places. He has little coin on him right now but he could go in almost any direction and be welcomed. Hell, he could likely go back to al-Quds and resume the trade that brought him here, if he were not certain that the sight of the city destroyed would reduce him to weeping and murderous rage. 

Fuck, he hates this. All of it. The Fatimids, the Franks, the Caliphate. Himself. He should never have come to al-Quds.

Swallowing down his rage, he walks until he is standing a dozen feet away from Nicolò and presses his palms together in mute apology. His dealings with previous Franks and Normaunds inform him that he should bow, but he will not dishonor Allah in that way. 

Nicolò is still staring. He hasn’t moved. 

“Jesus?” he whispers.

Yusuf drops his hands. “Oh, fuck me.”

A/N  
-Much of my headcanon for Joe’s background comes from this: https://stele3.tumblr.com/post/625455363382181888. I chose Mahdia (al-Mahdīyah) as Joe’s birthplace because Marwan Kensari is of Tunisian descent and the city of Mahdia has a rocky history with the Genoese in the exact time period of both their lives.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashkelon
> 
> -o-
> 
> Warning for disordered eating: Nicoló has a complicated relationship with hunger and spirituality, and fasts whenever he is upset, thinking that it will bring him closer to God. It's also a form of self-punishment.

“I was born in al-Mahdīyah,” Yusuf tells him. Nicolò stares at him blankly.

“Is that...near Jerusalem?” he asks.

“Is it--no, it’s not, it’s south of ‘Imārat Ṣiqilliya. On the coast?” When Nicolò remains silent, he throws up his hands and slaps his thighs. He’s still standing a few feet away, naked, and every time he moves or gestures, his cock swings a little. It’s right at Nicolò’s level and his eyes have started to water with the effort of keeping his gaze up.

“Years ago, the Genoese set fire to al-Mahdīyah,” Yusuf says. “My mother died. That is why I grew angry, when I learned you were from Genoa.”

Oh. Nicolò had almost forgotten about their last altercation in the shock of seeing the face of Jesus on the body of a very naked, wet Saracen. He is older, now, about Nicolò’s age, but his features are still recognizable from the vision Nicolò had in that alleyway so many years ago. Nicolò is somewhat grateful to be sitting, even if it puts him at a disadvantage should they fall to violence again: if he’d been standing when he first saw Yusuf’s face, he might have fallen to his knees on reflex.

When Nicolò says nothing, Yusuf unfolds the sopping bundle of his clothes and leather armor from underneath one arm. Wrapped inside are two fish. Sitting in the sand, he takes out a small knife, the blade not long enough to make Nicolò flinch, and sets about gutting the fish. Nicolò watches him for a bit, then retrieves the satchel the mother and child had dropped when they fled from him. When he proffers a loaf, Yusuf’s eyes light up with ravenous hunger and he pauses in his work to snatch up the bread and shove a piece in his mouth.

As he does so, he murmurs what is clearly a prayer. “Bismillahi fee awalihi wa akhirihi.”

Nicolò flinches. He has started to feel desperately foolish. In his vision, Jesus had been Nicolò’s age, before he began His ministry. Nicolò had felt such a rush of love and tenderness fill him at the sight of His face, and all along it had been--

“Have you been to Genoa?” he demands at the same time Yusuf asks, “Why do you not eat?”

They both grimace at one another. “No, I have not,” Yusuf answers. He holds out the loaf of bread. “Eat, too.”

Nicolò shakes his head. Yusuf appears entirely without guile. And anyway, why would he lie about this? Why would a Saracen travel to a city full of people he hates in order to smile at a sickly beggar boy in an alley? 

So he must be mistaken. The boy-Jesus he saw in his vision must have looked similar enough to Yusuf that his face overtook the one Nicolò’s memory--but as he darts glances in Yusuf’s direction, he knows in his gut that it isn’t the truth. The jolt of recognition was too strong. He feels it even now: this is the boy he saw before, become a man who is unselfconsciously nude and gutting a fish in between bites of hard bread.

A man who Nicolò has killed, and been killed by in return. 

Jesus, too, had been killed and rose from the dead--but the man next to him says he is from Mahdia, which Nicolò now vaguely recalls being to the south. He is graceful, both in combat and out of it, but there is nothing beatified about him as he digs out fish guts, makes a face at them, and casts them aside. If he is the Second Coming of the Lord and Savior, he’s hiding it well. 

A terrible sense of loss floats on the surface of Nicolò’s mind, and he swiftly casts a net about it, tucking it away.

He sits up and rubs at his face, hopefully erasing any of his inner turmoil, then takes out the waterskin he filled at the well after their last fight, while Yusuf had still been dead. They are both half-starved, thirsty, and exhausted. Yusuf is seeing to one of those things, and if a Saracen can gather his mind enough to pray and feed himself then so can Nicolò.

Of course then he is in the middle of drinking when Yusuf says, “I dreamed about you.” 

Nicolò does not quite choke, but he does cough a little. Fortunately, Yusuf isn’t looking at him: his gaze is on his fingers. He has cut himself, just a nick on his fingertip, and he studies the wound thoughtfully. His thumb swipes away the blood, which oozes back up quickly.

“I saw you in al-Quds,” Yusuf says. “And then later, I dreamed of you dying--you defended a Jewish woman and someone killed you for it. Did that happen?”

“Yes.” He didn’t know whether he had saved her or not. He’d woken up facedown in what he hoped was his own blood, and neither his killer nor the woman had been anywhere in sight. 

“I saw it.” Yusuf swipes his fingers again. This time the blood wipes away clean; the skin underneath is healed. They both study it until Yusuf shakes himself and returns to the fish. “Have you dreamed of me?”

“Yes,” Nicolò says and his voice sounds normal, doesn’t it? How would a normal man speak in this situation? He’s only ever really conversed with his parishioners, and then as their priest, responsible for shepherding their souls. “I saw you...eat something, and after you were sick?”

Yusuf barks a laugh; his teeth flash bright against his skin. “That stupid bird.”

“Did you...dream of me before you killed me?”

“No. Did you dream of two women? One woman was tall, with an axe--”

“And one was not tall, with a bow,” Nicolò finishes. He sits up, grateful to have a topic of conversation removed from the two of them. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know. I heard one of them call the other by name, but I couldn’t remember it when I woke.” Yusuf expertly fillets the rest of the fish in silence, a frown between his eyes. The first cut of flesh gets held up into the air and he murmurs, “Bismillah,” before popping it in his mouth. 

Nicolò’s stomach twists inside of him, pleading. He watches as Yusuf cuts off another piece of fish. It is white on the inside. Before the assault on Jerusalem he had fasted for three days and then afterwards…he has not eaten much since then, either.

When Yusuf offers him the second piece, however, he shakes his head. The frown deepens but Yusuf does not insist, just accepts the waterskin that Nicolò passes over. 

-o-

They sleep under the shade of the olive trees near the well, both of them too exhausted to keep watch or do anything except curl around their belongings and rest their heads on their still-wet clothing. In the middle of the night Yusuf manages to drag himself up to perform Isha, wrapping his body in torn-up clothes before using his leather armor as a prayer mat. _Alhamdulillah_ , he thinks, _I am sorry my body is uncovered in Your sight but it’s been a very difficult week._

The Genoese does not stir but Yusuf would swear that moonlight catches on the glint of eyes once or twice. 

In the morning Yusuf builds a fire and roasts the second fish. Nicolò rises and dresses then spends several minutes on his knees in prayer. 

By the light of day, Yusuf studies his companion. His clothes are as tattered as Yusuf’s, carved by the violence they committed against one another, or that was done to them by others. He’s currently much cleaner than any other Frank Yusuf has ever met--their churches must stink, all those unwashed bodies packed into the same room. His pale, prominent eyes swim above a hooked nose, and while Yusuf can testify firsthand to the man’s physical strength, he is surprisingly lean, almost thin. His limbs meet in a jumble of angles that in summary has no right to be as compelling as it is, and he occupies that whole with the blithe ignorance of someone who has never noticed a lascivious gaze in his entire life.

Nicolò’s rosary beads click together softly as he prays, and he spends a good deal longer at it than most Franks, so perhaps he is a devout man. Or maybe he has a guilty conscience. 

Once he roused himself from the battlefield, Yusuf had passed into Jerusalem only briefly. What he saw there is burned into his memory forever. 

Nicolò finishes praying. He does eat the cooked fish, though slowly and with visible reluctance. 

In the absence of active fighting, the well’s habitual visitors trickle back. Shepherds and travelers, armed men who are clearly foraging among the battlefield, a few deserters from both sides. All cast suspicious gazes at Nicolò and Yusuf--still an aznagi man far from home--but thus far no one breaks the special peace that always exists around a well in desert places. 

Nicolò stands and looks at Yusuf. In the very recent past they have done their best to kill one another, and Yusuf feels fairly certain that Nicolò still has the sling tucked away somewhere on his person; but at the moment he very much seems like a man waiting to be told what to do.

“Will you go back to al-Quds now?” Yusuf asks. Swallowed rage makes his voice harsh. What has happened took many men and women to bring about: the Seljuks, Caliph al-Hakim and his persecution of Christians a hundred years ago, the Byzantines and their Greek emperor, every one of the Frankish princes. What good would it do to rage at one man? Yusuf doesn’t know how many times they’ve killed one another but he’s fairly sure that if it was going to take, it would have by now.

He can’t tell if Nicolò hears the anger. The man does not show much, save in extremis. Yusuf knows that he is capable of strong emotions; but now his face betrays none of his thoughts. After a moment he merely shakes his head. 

God preserve him. To be fair, at least Yusuf knows the languages spoken in this land--most of them, at least--and could pass for a local at a distance. Nicolò...without the other Franks, he is alone, likely penniless judging from his clothes. That doesn’t mean, of course, that Yusuf is obligated to protect or help him: until last night, they were enemies, and might be again after this strange respite. 

“I am a merchant,” he says. “I am--I was bound for Cypros after I concluded my business in Jerusalem.” Timber, actually. They’d needed it for repairs to the city walls and defenses. It hadn’t been enough. “My ship waits for me in Haifa, Inshallah, if that prick Ali hasn’t declared me dead and run off with it.”

“You are...going home?” 

“Eventually, yes. I live in al-Qayrawān now--that is near al-Mahdīyah. Will you go home now that your holy war is ended?”

It is an effort not to let bitterness fill his mouth. Anger follows swift in its steps: this man came here to conquer and murder, and even if his enemies are not actually Yusuf, he is still a conquerer and a murderer. Why should Yusuf taste his own rage? Let the bastard choke on it.

No sooner has his temper risen than Nicolò says, “I can’t go home.”

“Why not? Is there somewhere else in this desert that you need to conquer?”

“No. I broke a lance over Guglielmo Embriaco’s head and stabbed his brother in the ass.”

Yusuf squints at him. The name, he vaguely recognizes through his--admittedly-casual--work in espionage: the leader of the _Balestrieri genovesi_. “The Jewish woman?” he asks.

Nicolò nods once, shortly.

Wonderful. So he has made enemies of his former masters. Yusuf should absolutely leave this man here. Except...last night was the first time in a week that Yusuf had not dreamed of Nicolò. The two women, yes: they had butchered some kind of extremely shaggy cow then argued in a language Yusuf has never heard before. But Nicolò had not appeared.

He has a terrible theory brewing in his mind that if they pass out of sight of one another, the dreams will resume. It may be that this Frank will torment him, either in visions or in person, wherever he goes, and Yusuf is presently certain of only one thing: he wants to get away from al-Quds, even in his dreams. The rest can wait until that goal is achieved. 

He asks, “Have you been to Cypros?”

-o-

It is a simple enough journey to make. Haifa, though ostensibly held by the crusaders, has maintained its usual business, and the crusaders--in a moment of unexpected wisdom--have allowed it to do so. 

As has been said before, Yusuf knows many merchants in many places. A few nobility in a few places, as well, who will pay handsomely for word of places across the sea, not to mention a firsthand account of what happened in al-Quds. It should be simple enough for him to find a few outlying towns where he can buy some respectable clothes and then arrive in Haifa with a frown on his face, decrying the recent war and bemoaning his lost wares. 

Or it would be simple, if Nicolò would stop fucking fighting people. 

The first time is, admittedly, Yusuf’s fault. They are buying clothes in a town already flooded with refugees heading for the sea. An intrepid merchant has set up his stall in the center of that flow and is likely making money hand over fist selling supplies. His prices are criminal, but Yusuf manages to haggle him down to something reasonable. The copious amount of bloodstains on his current set of clothes probably helps. Nicolò, who does not speak Turkish, stands nearby and keeps his head down as instructed. 

As they complete their transaction, Yusuf becomes aware of a group of men moving through the steady stream of refugees, stopping a few at a time and taking things from them. Bandits masquerading as city guards, or more likely city guards acting as bandits in the chaos. Yusuf watches them pluck oranges from the hands of an elderly couple as he accepts the wrapped bundle of new clothes, then turns to face Nicolò, catching his eye and tipping his head towards the approaching trouble.

This results in Nicolò following his gaze in time to see one of the guards backhand the elderly woman right in the face.

Yusuf jolts, hissing a breath through his teeth. He isn’t the only one: the guard seems to have realized that he’s crossed the line from an annoyance to a shared enemy, for he draws his shimshar as several refugees crowd around the injured woman, shouting at him. The other guards close ranks. It’s the kind of situation that could easily turn into a bloodbath and--

Nicolò slams into the guard, physically bowling him to the ground. The crowd surges forward in his wake.

“Oh you fucking fool son of a dog,” Yusuf exclaims.

It goes this way all through their journey into the city. War brings out the worst, most desperate parts of humanity, and apparently Nicolò has never fucking been to war before, because he absolutely refuses to put his head down and mind his own business.

“You need to stop,” Yusuf tells him after he’s managed to drag Nicolò into an abandoned home. It’s already been lightly ransacked so he doesn’t feel too bad about taking refuge here. “God might have granted you the ability to run your head into the same wall repeatedly but that doesn’t mean you _should_. I don’t have the money to keep buying you new clothes and no one’s going to let you on a ship covered in blood.”

“I thought you owned the ship,” Nicolò retorts, holding his wounded hand. Blood drips between his fingers; at least he’s holding it away from his body, and his clothes.

“I’m _renting_ the ship. Ali is the captain and some old, rich widow in al-Qāhirah actually owns it. Let me see your--oh, fuck!”

Nicolò’s hand is nearly severed, save for a few scraps of skin. He’s holding it in place with his other hand, squished to his wrist. “It’s fine,” he says. He’s even paler than usual. “It will--fit back in place.”

“How do you know?”

“You cut my whole arm off. This arm, actually. My sleeve held it in place and it healed.”

“That’s--fuck, that’s disgusting.” Yusuf is trained with the shimshar and a few other implements of war as befits a warrior-poet; that doesn’t mean he has the stomach for blood. Still, he cannot help but watch in amazement as the ragged skin of Nicolò’s hand sort of...ties together with his wrist. Like two flows of water meeting, clashing, and then settling into one. 

Something cracks loudly. “What was that?”

“My bone.” Nicolò sways in place. Yusuf puts one hand on his shoulder to steady him. 

“I wonder what would happen if you truly lost it,” he muses aloud, still disgusted but at the mercy of his overactive mind. “If it was cut off and then--buried, or burned, or crushed. Would you grow a new one?”

“Jesus heal man’s ear,” Nicolò mumbles, his Greek faltering.

“Yes,” Yusuf says, “okay. I give you thanks for that insight.”

Fortunately only Nicolò’s shirt cuff was bloodied by the incident, so they roll and tuck it under. Yusuf takes a long moment to wipe his wrist, still fascinated and disgusted in equal measure. The fingers twitch. “Does it still hurt?” he asks.

“No, only…” Nicolò pauses, frowning, then says, “Lightning.” He wiggles his fingertips.

“I wonder what would happen if we were decapitated. Or cut into more pieces, and those pieces separated. Would the largest piece regrow the rest? Or would we be trapped there forever, unable to die and okay, refocus. You need to stop fighting people. For one thing, you’re terrible at it—”

“I am not,” Nicolò says, affronted, as if he didn’t just have his hand cut off while trying to throw a punch. 

“Yes, you are. You’re not helping anyone, you’re only making trouble. More city guards will have an excuse to come this way and bother people, now they have the story of a Frankish Crusader run amok.”

“Then I will fight them, too,” Nicolò says stubbornly. “It’s not as though they can kill me.”

Yusuf grinds his teeth. “And what happens when word reaches the other Franks of a brave and noble Christian being cut up by dirty Saracens, hm? Isn’t that how all this began in the first place? Will they come marching back here and put the heads of all the girls in Haifa on pikes?”

It’s the first time that they’ve spoken of it directly, what happened in Jerusalem, and Yusuf feels as though a pit of boiling water has opened up under a precipice at their feet. 

“I didn’t,” Nicolò stammers.

“Didn’t what? Didn’t rape a child then take her head as trophy?” Tampened rage bubbles over and Yusuf presses closer, standing toe to toe with Nicolò. He is a few inches taller and he hates that he likes that, hates that it makes him feel protective of this man who absolutely does not deserve it. “You were part of it,” he snarls, Greek turning to butchered meat between his jaws. “You helped it happen. We kept them from the walls until the Genoese came, until you turned the tide--”

“I didn’t know it would be like that!” Nicolò shouts, not backing away an inch even as his voice breaks. 

“ _Do you think that matters to the dead girl?_ ” 

Things devolve from there and they go to the floor, scrabbling at one another furiously. But Yusuf is already tired, exhausted really. So he forces his limbs to go limp, takes a punch across the face then another. Apparently Nicolò isn’t the type of man who strikes a passive opponent more than twice, though he stays tense, his thighs clamped tightly to Yusuf’s sides. 

Yusuf can’t help but laugh. “Speaking of fools and walls. Here we are again.”

Nicolò studies Yusuf for a long moment in silence. His eyes are so pale--greener than Yusuf thought, like the ocean off the shore of Alexandria in springtime, when seaweed grows thick. It would be a lie if Yusuf said he wasn’t looking: he has eyes, and so does his idiot not-Frank. Oh, does he have eyes.

Above him, Nicolò’s shoulders slump and he carefully shifts off of Yusuf, climbing to his feet then offering a hand. Yusuf takes it. Once they are both standing, Nicolò squeezes his fingers. 

“I am sorry,” he says. His knuckles, curled in Yusuf’s hand, are rough and split, still twitching with new life. The bruises on Yusuf’s face throb in time to his heartbeat.

Speaking of fools. 

-o-

“Ah, Alhamdulillah,” Yusuf exclaims as he catches sight of the Gienah, still patiently bobbing in the harbor like a horse chewing oats. He speaks out of the side of his mouth to Nicolò as they cross the plank to board: “All right, try to be quiet and stay to the side, don’t speak to anyone unless you check with me first. Hopefully no one will notice--”

“Yusuf!”

“Shit,” Yusuf says. Ali stands on the deck a dozen feet away, his hands lifted above his head.

“You’re alive!” he calls. 

“I am. Try not to be disappointed.” 

“I’m not, I am well-pleased.” He smirks at Yusuf’s dubious expression as they clasp hands in greeting. “I know, I was surprised, too. When I heard about Jerusalem I knew you were too stupid and too stubborn to keep well out of that mess. Now tell me, did you wet your shimshar or your pants?”

“Neither. I got paid for the timber and spent the last three weeks in Amman eating dates and reading poetry to a dancing girl.”

“Hm, hm, of course. And what of the Frank who slunk on board after you like a stray cat?”

Yusuf suppresses a wince and glances over at Nicolò. He’s standing near the rail, watching the movements of the sailors around him the way a fish would watch the construction of a mosque. Yusuf shrugs. “No one important. A friend.”

“Ah, Yusuf, only you would make a new friend in the middle of a war. Tell me, did you take him prisoner? If you sell him to me, I’ll give you a fair price.”

“I’m not selling him. I’m taking him to Cypros.”

“Oh, on whose ship?”

“On this fine vessel, of course. I would trust no other,” Yusuf adds, laying on the charm.

Ali slithers out from underneath the charm like a well-oiled lizard. “Well, perhaps he’ll earn his passage in ransom money?”

“You’re a fool if you think anyone’s going to pay coin for him. Look at him!”

They look. Nicolò squints back. 

“Look,” Yusuf says, “truth be told he’s nothing but a humble Christian pilgrim who got caught up in the fighting and is trying to make his way back home. I took pity on him and so should you. Wallah, if anything, _you_ should be paying _me_ for bringing you such a ripe opportunity to do good deeds before the sight of God!” 

Ali makes a rude sound and names a price.

“You’re a heartless dog and your father shat himself at death,” Yusuf tells him. 

“Hm, I’ve already forgotten why I missed you.”

The ship is named Geniah, which Yusuf explains is named after a star constellation in the shape of a swan’s wing. Nicolò has seen swans before, graceful white birds that glide through the water. This ship, stuffed to bursting with goods and stinking of the beach at low tide, does not in any way remind him of a swan. 

There are a few other passengers on board, all merchants, and this poses something of a problem--surprisingly, not for Nicolò. When he follows Yusuf below the deck to claim bunks for themselves and escape the hot sun, they find a trio of Saracen men crouched in a corner of the deck, hurriedly putting away dice. Their guilty air quickly turns to hostility when they see Yusuf and they loudly mumble things that cause Nicolò’s companion to pause and straighten, his hands curling into fists.

He does not react beyond that, however, so Nicolò waits until they have walked away to ask, “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing,” Yusuf says, but the corner of his mouth twists as he casts another dark look back at the group in the corner. “Fucking Arabs think they’re better than the rest of us, even with dice in their palms.”

Nicolò follows his gaze automatically, already accustomed to trusting Yusuf’s judgment of a situation--and then the words sink in. “Wait. Are you not a Saracen as well?”

Yusuf puts his meager possessions--a bundle of clothes and some round things that might be fruit--down on a swinging hammock and frowns. “I’ve heard this word before from your people, and never kindly. What does it mean?”

Nicolò puts down the satchel, now reduced to one loaf of bread and some olives wrapped in cloth, onto the hammock strung just above Yusuf’s. He tries to choose his words carefully. “An...Arab man who believes in many gods.”

The look that Yusuf gives him could wilt a flower. “First off,” he says, holding up a finger. “I am not Arab. I am aznagi. The Arabs came to our lands four hundred years ago and not even the great prophetess Damiya could hold them back. Secondly, I worship one God, the god of Mūsā ibn ʿImrān, peace be upon him, and the god of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him as well. Your god is my god. I am no heathen.”

“You,” Nicolò starts, then stops, having to reorder his mind completely. “You believe in Jesus Christ?” 

“Of course I do. It’s not a matter of believing, he existed and he was a great prophet of God.”

“You believe that He was the son of God, the Messiah?”

“No, no. There is only one God. You,” he wags his raised finger at Nicolò, “you are the heathens, with your Trinity. God alone is God, He alone is the Knower of the unseen and He alone knows what is within Himself. Jesus, praise be upon him, denied that he was a god.”

“No, He didn’t. He said that he was God born into human flesh in His body, ‘et Verbum caro factum est.’ He was both the son of God and God Himself. Saying that we worship multiple gods is like saying that sunlight and the reflection of sunlight in a window have two different sources.”

Yusuf half-sits, half-leans against his rope hammock, tilting his head to one side. It’s hard to say through his beard but Nicolò thinks that he might be hiding a smile. “You speak Latin?”

“Yes. Before the holy war, I was an _ieréas_.”

“I don’t know this word.”

Nicolò brings his hands together then genuflects in the air. The movement brings back sharp memories. It has been some time since he did anything more than pray quietly to himself; his heart aches as he thinks of the parish church of Santa Giusta d’Albaro. It was humble and smelled strongly of mold in the wintertime, but it had been _his_ , the first kind of home he could remember. When he had stood before his congregation and guided them through the eucharist, it had felt like he belonged to them, and they to him, and all of them together belonged to God. Only the pull of his soul to the Holy Land and the Crusade could have ever caused him to leave. Not for the first time he wonders how they all are--Signore Marcello, who had paid for Nicolò’s armor and equipment; little baby Antonia who had nearly squirmed out of his hands headfirst into the baptismal font; he even misses the drunkard Salvatore, who’d attend service every day for a sip of free wine and some conversation. 

Nicolò hadn’t lied, before, when he’d said that he couldn’t go home again, though Guglielmo Embriaco was less of a problem than he’d made him out to be. Other considerations made him recoil from the idea. Even if the bishop allowed Nicolò to renew his vows, everyone would want to know about the Holy Land and what he did there and...what could he possibly say? They would look to him as a hero, would want to hear all about how he killed Saracens for the glory of God.

“Ah. A priest? That...ahh!” Yusuf’s mouth and eyes open wide. “That explains so much!”

“What do you mean?” Nicolò asks, still half-trapped in his memories.

“Everything about you makes so much more sense now.” Yusuf stares up at the wooden beams above them. “I feel a little bad. But wait, how did a priest join the _Balestrieri genovesi_?”

“Not easily. They wanted me to serve as religious counsel, but then a dozen men in training all sickened and they were short on arms to wield the bows. First they asked me to help span, but then another dozen men deserted a month before we were to sail, and I felt--I was afraid that if we lost any more, Signore Embriaco would cancel the entire venture. I went to my bishop and asked to be released from my vows.”

“Huh.” Yusuf studies him with one elbow balanced on his knee, his hand stroking his beard. Nicolò tries not to fidget. He’d like to sit down, it’s been long enough since he slept that he feels shaky, but he can either sit on Yusuf’s hammock or climb into the hammock above him, both of which strike him as even more awkward than standing where he is, swaying with the movement of the ship. Do grown men sit on each other’s beds? Somewhere in Nicolò’s memory is a faceless aunt who raised him from infancy, and a single bed into which he had huddled with other children who must have been his cousins. 

“So you had a month to learn how to use a crossbow. Did they teach you any swordplay?” Nicolò shakes his head. “Well, now I’m just embarrassed that you killed me twice at close quarters, Father Nicolò.”

It sounds so strange that Nicolò laughs. “No, no, uh--when I took vows, I took the name Giacomo. Padre Giacomo.”

“Ah, that’s right, you make new names for yourselves. Sit down, I feel like I need a sword in hand if you keep looming there. Tell me, Padre, is there anything in your faith that explains what is happening to us?”

Gingerly, Nicolò sits on the other end of the hammock. It creaks; Yusuf rises a little in place as the rope dips underneath Nicolò. “I’m not a Padre anymore. And God has made many miracles, why not this one?”

“That may be, but why us? Miracles tend to happen to those who look for them, and while you might have been a holy man, I will not lie and say that I have led an entirely pious life--I’m a merchant, I sell timber and glass throughout the Baḥr al-Rūm. I don’t cheat people or play dice like some I could speak of, I keep halal as much as I can and give to beggars and widows, but there have been some indulgences, some...” He pauses, glancing meaningfully at Nicolò. What his meaning could be, Nicolò has no idea. Yusuf lowers his voice and finishes, “Some immodesty.”

“Ah.” 

“Ah,” Yusuf echoes. “You look horrified. Is immodesty a terrible sin in your faith?”

“No, no, no worse than the others. It’s just the one to which everyone always wants to confess.” Nicolò presses at his eyes; he feels a headache coming on. Suddenly he feels very much like he is back in the confessional, struggling to understand half of what his parishioners told him about their sexual lives. 

“I take it that is not one of your personal vices,” Yusuf comments. He is definitely smiling, now. “Your wife is fortunate.”

“I don’t have a wife. It is against Church law.”

“Well I have met many priests.” Standing, Yusuf reaches both hands above his head. His back cracks and he groans. “And most of them had wives, not to mention children.”

“Not anymore.”

Yusuf, who had been turning one way then another, pauses. “What do you mean?”

“O Pápas. He said that the wives and children of priests should be sold into slavery.” It is Yusuf’s turn to look appalled and Nicolò explains, “There were...bad priests. They stole from their _ekklisía_ and gave to their families.”

“So the Church sold their children?” Nicolò does not answer. He had known priests with children, too, small babies that they carried on their hips. After a moment, Yusuf shakes his head. “Wallah. I take it you never took a wife?”

“No.” He hasn’t taken any concubines, either, which he knows is fairly customary among the wealthier clergy. “Have you?”

“Not yet. I was, once, but she...died some time ago. What about…” 

Here, Yusuf trails off. Nicolò cocks his head, waiting. “What about what?” he asks.

Yusuf blinks a few times, then smiles in a very different way from before, for once seeming uncertain. The silence stretches around them and Nicolò, no stranger to the absence of words, feels an unfamiliar urge to fill it, to keep Yusuf talking to him. He says, “If you are a merchant from al-Qayrawān, why were you fighting here? I thought all of the caliphate were...Arabs.”

“Not all of them. Did you...see much of al-Quds? The city, I mean.”

The bodies, the blood up to his ankles. “No.”

“From almost anywhere inside the city walls, you can see the Qubbat al-Sakhrah, high up on the Temple Mount. Its walls are carved marble, perfectly smooth, like glass.” He mimes passing his palm over the surface. “Every day, when the sun rises, it is the first thing in the city touched by its light, and the reflection shines down through the streets. The city is divided into four quarters: Muslim, Christian, Armenian, and Jewish, and if you stand high on the walls, you can see the people of each going about their days, traveling to prayer. Among the buildings are groves of olive trees, and children hang strands of cloth or little spinning toys in the branches. There is something holy to everyone in that city--and how could there not be? It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I would challenge anyone to look upon it and not feel their heart thrill to the glory of God’s creation. I fought to defend that beauty.”

 _And now it is gone._ He doesn’t say the words, but Nicolò hears them anyway. Feels them. The warmth is gone from Yusuf’s face and this time, Nicolò does not try to break the silence.

Distantly, from the city, a voice calls out. The sound of the ship changes as voices fall silent and bodies move in concert. Yusuf points upward. “I go to prayer.”

Standing, he removes the headscarf he has worn all day, then his shoes, and begins to wash himself as he has done several times a day in the time they’ve known one another. Nicolò bites the inside of his cheek and looks away. Yusuf has said they worship the same god, but he doesn’t know how that can be. It goes against everything that Nicolò has been taught: Saracens are savage heathens to be defeated in battle, they cannot be trusted to parley as honest men, and even doing business with one is cause for excommunication. They are thieves and murderers, all. 

But one of them has the face of what Nicolò has spent the last eighteen years of his life believing was Jesus. That vision--it had led him to the Church and salvation in Christ. That it could all be untrue...

“There are oranges,” Yusuf murmurs. He passes his hands over his head, dampening his dark curls before he covers them with a small black cap. He doesn’t look at Nicolò but gestures to the fruit. “Save some for me.”

He goes up onto the deck of the ship. The three Arabs from earlier do, as well, and Nicolò finds himself alone for the first time in weeks. He exhales slowly, glancing over at the oranges. He hasn’t eaten very much. In times of inner turmoil, it is reflexive for him to fast; always he feels closest to God when he is empty inside, even wracked by hunger pains. Now, though, it makes him think of the three days before Jerusalem and he bites again at his cheek just to taste something before drawing out his rosary.

It is no fine thing: a simple wood-carved crucifix as befits a parish priest. The rosary beads and cross are made from dark wood, but the figure of Jesus is paler, His limbs stretched wide to either side, and worn from the touch of Nicolò’s fingers. 

Above him there is a soft rush of noise, the sound of many knees lowering to the deck in unison, then hands, then foreheads. A little sunlight peeks through the cracks between boards of wood and Nicolò watches shadows move, listening to the murmur of voices repeating the same words in unison. 

_Please help me_ , he thinks. It’s barely even a prayer. His hand closes around the crucifix, thumbing at the beads, but his mind will not form the proper words. _Please help me._

A/N  
-The “great prophetess” Damiya that Yusuf references was a leader of the amazigh people who violently resisted the Arab conquest of the Maghreb. She won several noteworthy battles but was eventually defeated and killed by Caliphate forces.  
-There is some conflicting evidence as to whether or not Pope Urban II declared that priests’ wives and children could be kidnapped and sold into slavery. The declaration of the Catholic Church that such actions should be taken occurred at the Synod of Melfi, but some sources claim the Synod took place in 1089 AD and some say 1189 AD. Considering that Pope Benedict IX famously abdicated the papacy in 1045 in order to marry his cousin, I find it plausible that, forty-four chaotic years later (during which time the Church went through nine popes, most of which didn’t even last a year), Pope Urban II decided that a crackdown on clerical non-celibacy was in order. Also, Nicky would have been nineteen or twenty years old in 1089, which is just. *chef’s kiss* Clergical marriage and/or concubines was still very much a thing after this declaration, but I can imagine that Nicky, being devout and conscientious (and not sexually desirous of anyone at this point), would have very strictly adhered to this restriction (and maybe even used it as an excuse to justify his lack of a wife/concubine).  
-Nicky’s attitude towards his faith is very much influenced by my own, a modern Christian living in the US. We’re kind of obsessed with death: Jesus died for our sins, the saints were mostly martyrs who died for their beliefs. All of our heroes died young. The best thing that you can do in a Christian society is live well enough that you can die and be with Jesus, and early Christians believed in this HARDCORE, to the extent that people would try for martyrdom by presenting themselves to the Romans for execution, in such large numbers that the Church actually had to lay down a ruling about not “soliciting” martyrdom. I don’t personally hold these same views but I recognize the fetishization of death in my fellow Christians. Nicky was taught to die in order to show his devotion and be worthy of eternal life with Christ, and now he’s fucking immortal. Throw in the fact that a lot of his personal identification with Jesus is wrapped up in Yusuf, a Muslim man, and you have a very confused Nicky.  
-Many thanks to lady-writes and lgbtmazight on Tumblr for sensitivity reads w/r/t to non-white, Muslim, and Maghreb identities. Any remaining mistakes or offenses are entirely my responsibility and I welcome any and all criticisms.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cyprus. 
> 
> -o-
> 
> There is mention of slavery in this section. Many thanks to lgbtmazight and lady-writes for the historical and sensitivity reads.

Cypros, like most places in this part of the world, has a complicated history. For hundreds of years, the Greek Christians and the Arab Caliphate actually co-ruled the island, it being too important a stop on various trade routes to cede entirely but too precarious a position to hold for long. These days, the resurgent Byzantines have pushed the Caliphate out. But an Arab-looking man with money and goods is still welcomed here, and Yusuf has a respectable amount of both.

He also, crucially, knows a man with an inn. 

Ibrahim bin Mufarrij has weathered the hostilities of both Christians and Caliphate. From atop his thick-walled inn overlooking the city of Limassol--with attached bath house--he has watched the tenuous peace between Constantinople and al-Qāhirah dissolve, the rise and fall of upstart governors, and the fracturing of empires. So it is no surprise that when Yusuf climbs the stairs to the roof of Ibrahim’s inn, he finds the owner waiting for him with lit candles, a cup of tea, and a plate of honeyed figs and bread, while Ibrahim himself enjoys a bottle of wine, his light evening robes draped just so. The dome of the ḥammām rises nearby, emitting enough warmth that even with a cool breeze, the night is heavenly.

“ _Shalom,_ my friend,” Ibrahim greets, rising to take both of Yusuf’s hands in his. “How are you?”

“ _Shalom,_ I am well enough. Yourself?”

“My back aches more with each passing year and the rats of Constantinople chitter for larger crumbs.” He lifts his gray eyebrows at Yusuf’s companion. 

“Ibrahim, this is Nicolò di Genoa,” Yusuf introduces, delicately switching to Greek. “Nicolò, this is my old friend and trading partner, Ibrahim bin Mufarrij. He owns this inn.”

“Genoa?” Ibrahim’s dark eyes study Nicolò from dusty head to dusty shoes. He says something in what Yusuf thinks must be Genoese; he has heard enough Latin dialects to understand a few words. Nicolò startles a little, glancing at Yusuf before he replies. Yusuf keeps his face pleasantly neutral. By now a wary truce predicated on necessity has solidified between them, but that doesn’t mean Yusuf has trusted Nicolò with more sensitive information, like Ibrahim bin Mufarrij.

“ _Bene, bene_.” Stepping back, Ibrahim gestures to the table. “Come, join me. I will have another seat brought up.” No sooner than he speaks the words, a slave rises from a cushion in the corner to go downstairs and reappear shortly with another cushion for Nicolò. Clearly Ibrahim’s informants hadn’t expected Yusuf to bring his stray cat along for this meeting. 

“You are too kind.” Yusuf takes off his shoes at the edge of the rug-laden sitting area and discreetly gestures for Nicolò to do the same.

A beat passes as they settle around the table, each silently uttering their respective prayers before Ibrahim lifts the bread basket and offers it to Yusuf, then Nicolò. “I had expected you a week ago, Yusuf, what kept you so long from my door?”

Likely, he knows the answer to that question very well: not a trade ship enters the port of Cypros whose captain fails to bend their knee to its unofficial ruler. The Byzantine governor may hold the island in name, but in spirit and body it--and a good portion of the trade in this eastern part of the sea--belongs to Ibrahim. 

“Jerusalem is fallen, captured by the Franks.” This, too, he is certain Ibrahim already knows, but together they are telling a story. “The Princes’ Army was nearly upon the city when I arrived. I saw quickly enough that they were ill-prepared--if they had purchased timber six months before, they might have fortified enough to hold the city, but as it was, they had neither the resources nor the men to do so. ”

Ibrahim nods, his eyes on the bread as he swipes it through honey. “How many men, would you say, they had?”

“Iftikhar al-Dawla had four hundred Egyptian cavalry and almost ten thousand men in the garrison, but then he had all of the city’s Christians expelled. That left him with six thousand in the garrison.”

“He feared collusion?” Ibrahim guesses. 

Yusuf spreads his hands. “Perhaps. Perhaps he was right. By casting them out, though, he crippled his ability to fight. Had he planned to do that ahead of time, he should have sent word to the Caliphate much, much sooner to send reinforcements.”

Ibrahim nods. There will be few enough firsthand accounts of what happened in al-Quds, at least from their people; the massacre saw to that. If Yusuf has any part in shaping the narrative that comes out of this mess, he wants one thing clear: Iftikhar al-Dawla, who escaped the city with his bodyguards, was a shit commander and a fucking coward. 

He lays out a brief but relatively accurate account of the siege of al-Quds, of course excising most of his own participation. This does not escape Ibrahim’s notice or interest: he asks, “How did you escape the city with your life, my friend?”

“By the grace of Allah and the kindness of a Frank.” He directs this last towards Nicolò, who has been grimly eating one fucking fig through this entire conversation and looks up now with the expression of someone who has just realized the fig is poisoned. 

Yusuf had instructed him not to talk much, but evidently he should have told him to keep his _face_ from talking, as well.

“I had wondered at the presence of a Crusader in the city,” Ibrahim comments, eyeing Nicolò. “Much less my inn.”

Yusuf swipes a crust of bread through honey, gathering shavings of almond. “After his kin fell to butchering the people of the city, he deserted. We met in Ashkelon--what remained of the city’s defenders had retreated down the coast, and vizier al-Shahanshah landed with a force of twenty thousand Egyptians to reinforce us. We outnumbered the Franks almost two to one, but al-Shahanshah failed to post guards and we were taken by surprise.” Another name, another failed leader. May they be remembered as such. “Nicolò and I fled to Haifa and made our escape. If not for him, I would be in a grave with a hundred Fatimid warriors right now.”

Strictly speaking, that’s almost true. He might have made it out eventually, but it would have taken him a great deal longer and drawn a lot more attention. 

Ibrahim smirks and lifts his glass. “Only you, Yusuf al-Kaysani, could make a friend of the enemy in the middle of a war.”

“It’s a gift,” Yusuf confirms with a smile, lifting his cup of goat milk in response. “The garrison at Ashkelon did not fall. I don’t know how, but when last I saw the city, their flag remained, though the Franks had retreated.”

They continue this way for some time, until Yusuf polishes off the bread and Nicolò has eaten the last of his fig. Then Ibrahim sits forward and says, “I will not keep you, my friends, for you have clearly passed through a difficult time. Your room is prepared and the facilities are open to you. May they bring you comfort.”

“I have no doubt they will,” Yusuf says, his skin itching with the need to soak. 

They bid Ibrahim a good night with promises to break fast with him in the morning, and descend to find another slave waiting in the hall outside Ibrahim’s best room. Either Ibrahim knew exactly when Yusuf was going to get here, or they are very lucky indeed: the room is spacious, bedecked with cushions and pillows and bowls of clean water strewn with rose petals. A large window framed by thick curtains looks not into the bay but faces the mountain range inland. 

Nicolò seems particularly taken with the view, crossing to the window to gaze up at the mountain peak north of the city. There isn’t much snow on the peaks this time of year, but the moonlight shining on its sides is somewhat impressive nonetheless. 

Watching him, Yusuf says, “That is Mount Olympos.” When Nicolò casts him a sharp, startled look, Yusuf smiles. “Not that one. There is another, on the border of Thessaly and Macedonia, where the old Greeks believed their gods dwelt. It is much taller.”

“You have seen it?”

“Only from the deck of a ship, looking inland. I have not done much trade in the Aegean Sea...truly, it was far off the usual route to Smyrna, but I bribed the captain to turn north until we could see the peak.”

“Why did you do that?”

Yusuf, who had been washing his hands in the rose-scented water, paused to consider his response. “There are not many mountains in my homeland. I had read of them in poetry and heard stories from traders my father dealt with; but frequently they exaggerated the things they had seen, as men do. They described spires of rock capped with snow— _snow_.” He laughs as he dries his hands. “Can you imagine trying to explain snow to a boy from the desert?”

It was meant as a rhetorical question, but Nicolò thinks for a moment then answers, “Like sand, but cold and wet?”

Yusuf casts him a wry look. “I invite you to imagine how unhelpful an explanation that is.”

The corner of Nicolò’s mouth ticks up. Always he is so reserved--well, almost always. It makes Yusuf want to get a stronger response from Nicolò outside the bounds of them murdering each other. He says, “Mount Olympos is actually one of several in a range, and the mountain itself has at least forty peaks. Even from the sea, it rose up into the sky like...like the edge of the world. Looking at it I could easily understand why the Greeks, why anyone, would look at it and think it the domain of gods.”

Nicolò looks at him. At first Yusuf had found the steadiness of his regard a little unnerving and had to stop himself several times from demanding that Nicolò blink, but now he finds it...enjoyable? Sometimes Yusuf catches himself balancing a dozen thoughts at once--the life of the modern merchant--but Nicolò is very...still. Focused. When he gives a thing his attention, he gives it all. Of course, he was a priest removed from the hectic secular life. Meditative thought was part of his profession. 

It is still somewhat unnerving, especially having been killed by the man more than once. Yusuf is no believer in desert spirits or anything else so superstitious, but Nicolò could make a man doubt himself.

Fortunately, Nicolò breaks the silence and answers the question with one of his own: “Why did you say all that to Ibrahim?”

“Say what?” Yusuf wipes his hands on his thobe before beginning to unbutton it. They have a washing service, here, and he is desperately glad of it. 

“That I saved you in Jerusalem. I didn’t, I--.”

“First of all. _Be quiet._ ” Yusuf casts his eyes to the walls and ceiling of their room, and Nicolò tenses but does not turn his head. Well, perhaps he is learning after all. 

Yusuf peels his thobe from his shoulders and there is...a flicker, like the flutter of a bird’s wing, gone so fast. A whole familiar language of looks, gestures, poetry, and other hints translates down to a single flick of Nicolò’s eyes from Yusuf’s eyes to his chest and back so fast that Yusuf doubts whether Nicolò even noticed it himself.

Which...is a giant complication. Not entirely unwelcome--Yusuf has been looking, he can admit that to himself. It would feel more wrong, except he dreamed of Nicolò weeping and dying in the bloody streets of al-Quds, trying to save a woman from his fellow soldiers. It does not excuse his involvement in all that came before, his naivete at what he was part of, but it does...soften the edge of Yusuf’s anger. Not enough to forget, nor to fully trust, but enough to feel the spark of attraction.

And even if all that were not so, well, it has been some time since anyone looked at him that way. Weeks, at least. Yusuf won’t die without attention, but he cannot deny that he likes it. Immodesty, after all, is his greatest sin. He’ll welcome the gaze of a Frank, even if he knows it cannot go any further than that.

He lets his arms slide free of the thobe one at a time and says, “Say nothing here that you do not want others to know. Second: I said what I did because it was true. We helped each other escape.” Setting aside his thobe, he slides his trousers from his hips. He can’t tell what Nicolò’s eyes do; he has a feeling that if he checked, the moment would break. “Third. The Caliphate and the Franks both agreed to keep their ships from this island, but it was Ibrahim who arranged that treaty. If I had not explained your presence on the island other than the possibility that you were a spy for Genoa, we both might have had our throats slit in the night.”

And while not permanently deadly, that would have proved extremely awkward and inconvenient. Not at all what Yusuf came here for. It is a place of danger, yes, but the manageable kind: if Ibrahim doesn’t want you dead, then not a blade will kiss your skin.

Yusuf stands, fully nude, and picks up one of the soft linen robes provided by their room. “I am going down to the baths, you should come, too.”

Nicolò looks down at himself then up at Yusuf. “Why? I am not dirty.”

Sea salt has mixed with dust to form a crackly varnish on Yusuf’s skin. He says, “Come down to the baths, _please_.”

There are two things that come to Nicolò’s mind when Yusuf says ‘baths.’

The first is a round, shallow basin kept in the corner of the room that he shared with several other impoverished clergymembers in the parsonage d’Albaro. At least once every four months they would fill it with well water and take turns bathing, the most senior going first; in the warmer months this was a pleasurable activity, enough so that one summer, Nicolò and Padre Giancarlo, a capellanus of the Bishop d’Albaro, had hauled the tub out almost every week. Then Padre Giancarlo had been removed from the parsonage and Nicolò was warned against leading his fellow clergy into sin, which had startled him. He hadn’t even known that...well, he hadn’t known, the honest, bemused admission of which had probably been the only thing that saved him from whatever penance had been required of Giancarlo. He’d only liked the cool water and being clean. After that, though, he’d carefully kept to the recommended bathing schedule. 

The second thing that comes to mind are the Roman bathhouses that dot the old empire. They are more common in the south and thus looked down upon in Genoa: to hear the Bishop d’Albaro tell it, they are extravagant at best and cesspools of moral filth at the worst. Nicolò is more than ready to believe the worst of fucking Pisans and Gaetans, but after his own experience with a simple tub, he can’t help but wonder if all the talk of public licentiousness and impiety is just that, talk.

So he undresses and quickly picks up the second, folded robe that Yusuf indicates for him. He holds it in front of him as he follows Yusuf down the stairs. They pass two women and that causes him no small amount of consternation: he is fortunate that Yusuf walks ahead, because he makes something of a fool, turning his ass against the wall and holding the robe over his front. The two women move past him without looking and it occurs to him that they must be slaves of the household. This, at least, is not a surprise: a thick train of pagans flows from Frankish lands in the north to Genoese slave markets. 

At one time...Nicolò does not remember specifics, but he thinks at some point he was in danger of being sold. The sale of Christians to Muslims was outlawed centuries ago, but that doesn’t mean it never happens--and Ibrahim is not a Muslim but a Jew, potentially allowed to move freely between the Christian and Muslim kingdoms.

He wonders if the two women would recognize his language if he spoke to them; then Yusuf calls his name and he hurries to catch up.

The baths are both exactly and not at all like he imagined: clean white tiles line every floor and wall in sight, and rows of delicate arches surround a steaming greenish pool. “This late, the attendants are mostly asleep,” Yusuf comments in an undertone. The shape of the dome overhead magnifies every whisper. “If you wanted a particular scent, though, or a massage--”

“No, it’s fine,” Nicolò says, probably too fast.

Yusuf hangs his robe on a hook by the door. For all his talk about the sin of immodesty, he had walked down the stairs past the slaves without a blink, but perhaps that’s what he admitted to in the first place. He walks across the floor to the bath fully naked--somehow he seems so much _more_ naked without the robe in his hands--and steps into the pool. The splashing echoes above them. There are few other occupants of the pool, all men: two old men in quiet conversation on the far side, their arms spread over the edge but still some distance away from one another and a man about their age who seems to be asleep with his head on the edge of the bath, cushioned by a towel. 

Casting about him, Nicolò finds--thanks be to God--a stack of towels in an alcove. Hanging up his robe, he plucks out two towels and makes the trip from there to the edge of the bath, where he hands one to Yusuf.

“Thank you,” Yusuf mumbles, placing the towel on the edge of the bath and sinking down with a sigh with the base of his head cushioned. The heat of the water stings Nicolò’s toes at first but he eases in quickly enough, hissing as certain...body parts encounter that heat.

Then he is fully submerged and suddenly, sharply understands the appeal of _bathing_. 

He must make some kind of noise because he hears a soft chuckle from beside him. “Are you well?”

The warmth of the water combined with the weightlessness of his body works to unlock muscles that Nicolò did not know he held tight. He does not quite float, but he drifts at little; the pool has two steps downward and then a sloping bottom. He lets his legs straighten out in front of him, his arms unspool, his chest fills with air. 

“Yes,” he answers belatedly. 

When, after some time, he opens his eyes, the dome of the building looms above them. Up there, the tiles are not white: they are blue and green and gold, and the gold tiles are...transparent, slightly? They seem darker than the others, and he would swear that he can see the moon through a few of them. He thinks that in the morning, they would make the whole space glow in golden light, and he immediately wants to see it, and he just as quickly thinks of Padre Giancarlo.

Beside him, water swirls. Yusuf seems to be washing his limbs underneath the surface of the water. At least that’s what Nicolò hopes he’s doing. Admiring the dome seems safer. 

Several very pleasant minutes pass this way. Nicolò moves his limbs back and forth in the water at first but then works up to sitting on a step and scrubbing at himself in a more efficient manner. He must admit that it feels good: they never had heated water at the parsonage, though he heard of monasteries where that was commonplace. 

Eventually the other visitors of the pool depart, the young one heading upstairs and the two older men exiting through what seems to be a public entrance. In their absence, Nicolò dares to explore the full length of the pool, pushing off from the side. The bottom never dips beneath the length of his body, but if he swims out to the center of the pool he can float with full ease, no part of him touching any surface. 

It is wonderful. His ears are beneath the water and when he opens his eyes, the beautiful, strange pattern of the dome is directly above him. He drifts there for a long time, tracing its design with his eyes. Lanterns flicker in alcoves around the edges of the dome, hanging from the walls, and they make the whole space even warmer. They have come from a desert, but that was a biting, killing heat; this is welcoming, enveloping. 

Eventually he rises from the water, which falls from his ears with a wet rustle. The echoing chamber of the bath house seems exceptionally loud after such muffled silence, and when he looks towards the edge of the bath, Yusuf is sitting on the upper stairs, watching him.

Nicolò lowers his eyes but first swims then walks when his feet encounter the bottom of the pool. It is warmer, below: there must be a small vent in the bottom that lets in the heated water from the earth. He focuses on that as he walks out to the first stair, then the second, then turns to sit down on the edge a few feet away from Yusuf.

He says, “I cannot repay you for all of this.”

“What do you mean?” Yusuf asks.

“When I took the cross, I was outfitted by the charity of a parishioner. I have no money of my own. Whatever you paid for my passage across the sea, the clothes you have bought me, the food I have eaten, the room upstairs, this bath...I have no way of paying you back for any of this. That seems a poor bargain for a merchant.”

Yusuf had warned him against spies but none of this is in opposition to what they have told Ibrahim. From the expression on Yusuf’s face, he agrees. He nods, looking into the dark, still waters of the pool. “It troubles you to be in my debt?”

“It troubles me to know that I have taken from you, with no way to make right your loss.” Even as he speaks, Nicolò thinks of sighting down the length of a crossbow and loosing the bolt. All the many times they have killed one another.

From the wry quirk in Yusuf’s mouth, he is thinking of the same. “Do not take to whipping your back on account of a few trifles.” He pauses then frowns and leans a little closer. His eyes are very dark. “Forgive me, I’ve never understood this or had opportunity to have it explained to me--people come to you and tell you the things they have done wrong, and you...forgive them, on behalf of those they have wronged?”

“No, I help guide them spiritually, to find proper _metánoia_.”

“I don’t know this word.”

“Ah, um...forgiveness. I help them find the proper action to take in order to reconcile with God.”

“But not with those who they wronged?”

“Sometimes, yes, but not always. Say a man comes to me and confesses that he quarreled with another man and struck him. If I send him to the injured man to apologize, then maybe they will quarrel again, in which case I’ve made the situation worse instead of better. But if I tell him that he must pray on days when he would be most likely to drink, then I keep him from the thing that would make him most quarrelsome.”

Yusuf absorbs that, stroking his beard as he thinks, then asks, “What do you do with a man who has killed someone?”

“That would depend on who he killed, and why.”

“Say he quarreled with a man, and killed him--accidentally, perhaps.”

“Well. That would depend on whether I actually believed it was accidental.”

“People lie within the confessional? Does that not go against the whole purpose?”

“People lie to themselves all the time,” Nicolò says. “They will speak a complete untruth with total honesty, because not believing it would be even more painful than carrying the sin within themselves. Say that a woman has confessed to being unfaithful to her husband with a neighbor, and then a week later her husband kills the neighbor. Now, he may confess to the crime but swear it was an accident, and when asked about his wife’s adultery, react with shock and denial that seems honest. Is he truthful, and it was an accident? Or is he lying to himself because he cannot bear the idea that the woman he loves would be untrue, and yet somewhere in his mind the hatred of his neighbor took root?”

Yusuf, who has been listening intently, leans backward with his eyebrows raised. “This is a great deal more complicated than I ever imagined. You must know not just the things people confess, but what is in their hearts.”

Scraping his hair back from his face, Nicolò sighs. “I try to. There are those in the Church who would say that a man who kills another by accident has committed the same sin as a man who kills out of malice.”

“But you don’t agree.”

“No. I think God wants His shepherds to care about their flocks more than that. I think He wants us all to be kinder to each other than that.”

Sometimes as he speaks, the affable mask that Yusuf presents the world—what Nicolò already thinks of as his ‘merchant face’—slips a little and he glimpses the person underneath. It happens now, as Yusuf’s eyes soften and his lips curve in a smile. The man upstairs, Ibrahim—he had japed Yusuf’s ability to make friends, but Nicolò can see it, the magnetism in Yusuf. With him at its center, the world around him seems to fall away.

He wonders if they are actually friends.

Yusuf sighs. “If I stay here any longer I will fall asleep.”

He rises and Nicolò follows.

Upstairs, their dirty clothes have been taken away--which does not seem to trouble Yusuf, and so Nicolò holds his tongue--the lanterns have been extinguished except for a few candles, and the cushions have been rearranged on a draped area that must be where they are intended to sleep. In the parsonage they each had their own thin pallet, but Nicolò has traveled--for the Synod and other Church business, and then to Sicilia with the Balestrieri genovesi--and slept in public inns where he shared a bed with other travelers; but they were strangers, most of whom exchanged little more than pleasantries...and he was never _alone_ in bed with another person. 

Not that this is much of a bed. Or perhaps it’s more than a bed. Nicolò is accustomed to a raised crib stuffed with hay and draped with ticking. This appears to be layers of thick rugs laid directly on the ground. Yusuf wears the plain cotton robe they were provided before the bath; it clasps across the chest and hangs to his knees. Other than that, there appear to be no blankets or other coverings, unless they are meant to yank down the drapes. Not that they need them, the night still being quite warm. In the desert they had shivered at night, but the sea keeps all things temperate. 

With a sigh, Yusuf gathers a few cushions and lies down on his side facing Nicolò. They slept naked in the olive grove, and on the ship Nicolò swayed in the hammock above his; it has been several days since they last turned blades against one another, and they had discarded those blades while still in the desert. To Nicolò’s knowledge, Yusuf has not carried a weapon since then; but he has had multiple opportunities to buy one along the way. 

Kneeling, Nicolò takes a few deep, cleansing breaths and murmurs his nightly prayers then deliberately, carefully stretches out with his back to Yusuf. 

He almost expects a comment or for Yusuf to demand an explanation. Instead, after a few moments the candlelight flickers and then sputters out when Yusuf sits up to extinguish the flame with a breath. 

They lie in the darkness. “Yusuf?” Nicolò whispers.

“Hm?”

“Is there anything in your faith that explains what has happened to us?”

A soft huff of breath. Nicolò would swear that he could feel it against the back of his neck. The whole of him, from his skull to his heels, buzzes with tension. “No,” Yusuf says. “A miracle, perhaps, but I do not know why God would bestow one upon me in particular. You, at least, are a holy man. But me?”

Through the window Nicolò can see the mountain in the moonlight. Yusuf has said that they worship the same god but in the same breath he denied Christ’s divinity, and Nicolò does not know how to reconcile the two statements in his head. No bishop would, either. It bothers him to imagine this divide between the two of them: until recently they were enemies, but the longer they travel together the more convinced Nicolò becomes that he was meant to find this man, that God has intended for them to meet. They are bound together, and yet they are divided, and that simply cannot be. 

He says, “Maybe it is not a gift but a calling. Maybe God wants us to do something.”

Behind him there’s the soft movement of cloth, as if Yusuf lifted his head. “Do what?”

“I’m not sure,” he says, and after a moment Yusuf lays back down. It isn’t long before his breath deepens and his body relaxes into sleep. Nicolò however, lies awake for some time, turning the question over in his mind. He can feel the shape of it settle, like tapestry threads reconnecting him to all that he knows and understands. 

He _was_ meant to find Yusuf. He is sure of this. And the more that Nicolò considers this thought, the more certain he becomes: God wants him to convert Yusuf to Christianity.

A/N

-No, this story isn’t going to turn into Nicolò converting Yusuf to Christianity. Nicolò has a lot to unlearn about the belief system that he grew up in: one doesn’t wave a magic wand and UNtransform from being a Catholic priest and Crusader, with no lingering prejudices and evangelical brainwashing. I headcanon Nicky as demisexual, so he hasn’t figured out yet that what he really wants from Yusuf has less to do with spiritual ecstasy than the physical kind.  
-The history of the slave trade during this time period is complex, but Genoese and Jewish slave merchants were particularly prolific in the trade of pagan people from Eastern Europe to the Muslim world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe#Italian_merchants


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cairo.
> 
> -o-  
>    
> Warnings for racism and Islamophobia on Nicolò's part. There's also a brief mention of slavery, a discussion of period-typical religious attitudes towards homosexual behavior, and an in-depth discussion between Yusuf and Nicolò about the origin of the latter's eating disorder.
> 
> I should also mention that I made a few edits to previous chapters for the sake of historical accuracy, particularly the w/r/t the difference between Genoa (historical) vs. Genova (modern dialect), and the fact that mint tea was not yet introduced to this part of the world. I am so, so grateful to everyone on Tumblr who is sharing their historical and cultural knowledge.

Sometimes, the dreams are merely flashes: a face, an emotion, a span of a few seconds riding in a saddle that isn’t even a saddle, really, just a thin but brightly-colored pad across a horse’s back. The heat of the sun against the side of his face. Fingers diving into a cunt--and isn’t _that_ a strange sensation?--and a wail of ecstasy. 

And other times, Yusuf closes his eyes and is in a cold, hilly place. He sits beside the remains of a fire while nearby, horses tear at the lush grass with their teeth. Across from him, a small woman is braiding her long black hair, and Yusuf feels such a surge of love in his heart that he almost does not want to wake. He sits at the shoulder of the woman’s lover and eats with them, listens to them speak a language unknown to him and laugh together. 

He wakes with his skin both chilled and warmed and the taste of their breakfast in his mouth. Behind him, the bed moves; when he turns, Nicolò is propped up on his elbows. 

On the other side of Nicolò snores a pair of traveling merchants, so Yusuf beckons him back down and rolls over so that their faces are close on the pillow. They are in al-Qāhirah, returned to shore with the Geniah and waiting for the next leg of their passage to commence. This is a point of some...uncertainty, at least on Yusuf’s part. 

It would be far easier for Yusuf to travel to al-Mahdīyah by boat, and thence to al-Qayrawān. But it would not be easy for Nicolò to travel that way: already it has grown difficult for Jewish residents of al-Qayrawān, who were the very founders of the city but are now trapped in the conflict between Sunni and Shi'a believers of the faith. To introduce a Christian man to that environment, just as the news of Jerusalem’s fall spreads, could prove disastrous. If Yusuf journeys home as he intended before all this began--as he meant to when he journeyed to Jerusalem in the first place--then he must leave Nicolò behind.

The alternative is a journey to ‘Imārat Ṣiqilliya--which, since the last time Yusuf checked, has _also_ officially changed from Arab hands to Christian with the fall of Noto to the hands of Varangians, called Normaunds. Apparently these conquerers from the north are a bit more civilized than the Franks: officially, they defer to the same Papacy, but they have not--yet--put the Muslim populace to the sword or even forced them to convert. It is, perhaps, one of the only places in their world that a Christian and a Muslim would both be reasonably safe.

He has told Nicolò-- _lied_ to Nicolò--that their journey is temporarily delayed. 

“What did you see?” Yusuf whispers. He has started to compile a list of everything they know about the two women they both see in their dreams. Nicolò can read and write Latin but his handwriting makes Yusuf want to weep, so he transcribes for them both.

“They travel through mountains,” Nicolò whispers. “Many of them, with a river passing through.” He makes a little winding gesture with his hand against the pillow to demonstrate. 

“I think they’re heading south. I felt the sun hot against the right side of my face.”

“They are moving quickly, but no one is chasing them, I think...I think they are trying to find us.”

They gaze at each other over the narrow length of the pillow between them. It is early morning, at least. If the women are just waking and taking their meal then they must be closer than they were before: only a few weeks ago, Yusuf dreamed of them in full daylight, riding and calling to each other as they crossed barren hills.

“Why?” Yusuf asks.

Nicolò looks at him in surprise, as if the answer should be obvious. “Because we are like them.”

Perhaps it should be obvious. The dreams feel very similar to those that Yusuf had of Nicolò after they parted on the battlefield outside of Jerusalem. But--Wallah, it was bad enough to deal with just two aberrations to the natural order of the universe. How many more are there? The very thought makes him wish he’d hopped on a boat to al-Mahdīyah and forgotten all about Nicolò di Genoa’s pretty eyes. 

“I think,” Nicolò whispers slowly, frowning into space, “they are lovers.”

He says it so casually, as if commenting that his feet are cold or that the sun is bright today. If Yusuf tried--no, he would never have spoken it aloud, such things are relegated to poetry and lingering glances, one doesn’t simply...say such things, so plainly. Unless?

Yusuf whispers back, “Are--is that...a sin, in your faith?”

“Oh,” Nicolò says, “yes. Is it--not in yours?”

“It is,” Yusuf confirms. 

“Ah.” Nicolò nods a little. Yusuf nods back. The merchants snore. “So we know that they are not Christian, and they are not...of your faith, either.”

Yusuf wants to protest this. There are many believers of the faith who, in their private lives, might take male lovers; he presumes that women do the same with other women, though he knows less on that subject, being as of yet unmarried himself and his younger sister Farah left the house before he ever had a chance to question her on the subject. Further, he knows that this is not uncommon in Nicolò’s world, either. There was one Christian merchant he dealt with some time ago, Alexios, whose husband Barnabas was as bearded as himself; Yusuf had stayed with them while in Piraeus on business, and after some careful allusions to the works of Farroḵi, had found his way into their marital bed. They had enthusiastically related the story of how they came to be married, in a church of the Byzantine faith, by a Christian priest. It had taken Yusuf, then still young--and he blushes to think of himself as the youth taken to their bed--some time to realize that not all Christians believe in such things. Whatever church and priest had married them, the union of Alexios and Barnabas was an anomaly of the Christian faith, not the norm.

Life and age have enlightened him: he counts himself among those who love God and are mindful of his tenets, but do not every day in every way keep to them. This, he thinks, is the way of most people. Still, he hesitates to say so right now, curled in bed face to face with Nicolò, a _priest_. Former priest. _Khalas_.

Fortunately right then one of the merchants snorts awake, and both he and Nicolò busy themselves with rising for the day.

The city of Cairo is, Nicolò has come to understand, the heart of the Arab Caliphate. The heart of the enemy to Christendom. A place where he must be cautious about traveling outside; Yusuf has warned him to never travel the city alone and to always walk behind him when they walk together. He means to make Nicolò appear to be his slave, and Nicolò knows he should be more offended by this than he is. 

It is beautiful. There is no other word for it. Technically the fortress of Fustat, to the south, houses all the administrative offices of the Caliphate, but the city itself is clearly what draws the eye, and the merchants. Its river draws a narrow line of green through the desert until it fans outward near the sea, and Cairo sits at the apex of that fan, positioned between the lush wetlands and the sand dunes to the south. From the moment they arrived, carried on boats upriver from the port, Nicolò felt the age of this place. He grew up around statues of the Roman gods but that was nothing to the ancientness of Cairo. Everywhere he turns, the eyes of heathen statues stare down at him. 

There are also a number of astonishing buildings of the prophet Muhammed’s faith. There is apparently a distinction to draw now, between Yusuf’s faith and heathen ideas. Periodically Yusuf will leave him to answer the call of a distant voice that echoes throughout the city from a high tower, and Nicolò spends those hours in anxious prayer, asking God for wisdom and guidance. The whole of the city quiets during these times, but it is Yusuf that he feels called to rescue from his misguided religion. Someone else can worry about converting the rest. 

When they are not swallowing up Yusuf, the buildings of the prophet’s faith are admittedly pleasing to the eye. Their domes glint in the sun, and their towers are impressive. One day Nicolò risks to follow Yusuf during the morning prayer, and unexpectedly finds himself on the edge of a courtyard of arches reflected in stone as smooth as the surface of a pond. There are no statues of Baphomet or Apollo--no statues at all, in fact. Filling the courtyard are many men; the women, he is given to understand, pray separately for the sake of modesty. He stands there for some time, watching the patterns of prayer that he has already learned by rote: the prostration, the rise, the kneeling, the chanting. 

It is easy to look out over the sea of moving bodies and find Yusuf; already, Nicolò thinks he could find Yusuf anywhere. Yusuf keeps his eyes closed, his lips moving along to silent words in his mind. He rises to his feet and bends at the waist with the other men around him.

Flinching, Nicolò hurries away. A few eyes follow him. When they first arrived here Yusuf had reopened his purse and bought Nicolò a lightweight tunic and loose, wide-legged trousers, cut in the local style. His head he covers with a scarf: on the boat, the back of his neck and nose had burned and peeled then went right back to pale again. Nicolò can’t help but miss the cowl of his priest’s robes.

He returns to their shared room, navigating the stone and dirt streets easily enough. One of the merchants is there when he walks in, having apparently not gone to prayer; he makes some comment that Nicolò does not understand and thus ignores. Playing the slave, he crosses to the small pack that Yusuf left behind in the room and checks the contents. Apparently Yusuf does have a knife, long and curved and wicked, tucked inside a scabbard covered with the flowing script of the Arabs. Also a scarf that he wears wound about his head when it is especially hot, which Nicolò sets to folding.

The merchant stands and walks around the bed to stand at Nicolò’s side. Nicolò straightens with Yusuf’s scarf folded over his hands. The merchant says something else, perhaps about the north, and takes hold of the edge of the scarf that covers Nicolò’s head, twitching it back to fall on his shoulders. 

Slowly, Nicolò turns the full force of the glare, refined by the parishioners of d’Albaro, on the man standing next to him. The merchant blanches, his mouth twisting, and backs away. He says something else in a contemptuous tone, maybe a warning about travel, and leaves the room. 

Once he is gone, Nicolò carefully slips the knife from under the scarf in his hands and tucks it into a pocket hidden in the side of his tunic. 

He sits down on the bed and does not mean to slumber, especially not after whatever that was, but the heat and a night of disrupted sleep lulls him. He falls asleep with his hand tucked in his pocket, curled around the hilt of the knife.

He dreams of a battle, the two women fighting and dying against those that Nicolò recognizes well enough: troops of the Byzantine kingdom, flying the banner of Christendom in Constantinople. They fall and they rise and the men who oppose them cry out in Greek, begging Christ to save them from these demons.

He wakes, panting, to Yusuf sitting on the bed nearby. At first Nicolò thinks he is writing, but as he sits up, Yusuf looks over at him with a sharpness that belies a guilty conscience. Nicolò knows the look well from his parishioners. 

The book is written in the Arabic tongue, but that is not what draws Nicolò’s eye. There on the page are the two women from their dreams in simple black ink, drawn over the words of the book. Yusuf has even smudged the page with his fingers, thinning the ink to give depth to their features. 

“You drew them!” Nicolò exclaims, the horror of his dream momentarily overcome by his astonishment at the accuracy of the drawing. Yusuf twitches. “Yusuf, that’s extraordinary. You are an artist?”

“Shush.” In response to Nicolò’s quizzical look, Yusuf shifts in place, tucking the book away, then explains, “It is _ḥarām_ in my faith to make false images of people.”

“Why?”

“‘He who creates pictures in this world will be ordered to breathe life into them on the Day of Judgment, but he will be unable to do so,’” Yusuf says with a trace of bitterness. “My grandmother recited that hadith one thousand and one times. Figurative art encourages idolatry.”

“Even images of God?”

Incredulity mixed with faint horror lights Yusuf’s eyes. “You draw pictures of _God_? How can you possibly say what He looks like?”

“Not me,” Nicolò replies. “I have never held artist’s tools. But many people depict Jesus Christ and his mother Mary...scenes from the Bible, and of the saints.”

“Ah. You draw your prophet, praise be upon him.” Yusuf seems a little less shocked, but still shakes his head. “What if someone draws him wrong, are you then not worshipping a false idol? Say a Greek artist paints him looking more Greek, while a Frank paints him looking like a Frank—how can you know what the truth is?”

For a terrible moment all Nicolò can think about the vision he had years ago. Having shared dreams with Yusuf, it shouldn’t be so strange to tell him now; perhaps Yusuf would even laugh about it, saying, _Well, does that not prove my point?_ Nicolò’s throat tightens and he rubs at it under the guise of consideration. 

Every _pater noster_ Nicolò has prayed since that day has been whispered with Yusuf’s youthful face in his mind. He cannot admit to that, it--he cannot admit that. Not yet, not until Yusuf is converted and understands the context. To speak it now and have it be misunderstood would be painful beyond death.

“God alone knows the truth,” he says, “and the eyes of man are inherently blinded by their sinful nature, but even the reflection of God in a puddle is beautiful.” Yusuf’s eyes soften and Nicolò continues, encouraged. “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things, and so even a warped image can inspire true devotion.”

“But who _decides_ what that unwarped image should look like?”

“I...don’t know. The Church. Those who have studied the word of God and are called upon to serve as shepherds to their flock.”

Even as he speaks, he knows that it was the wrong thing to say. Yusuf sits back. “You put a great deal of trust in your Church.”

His eyes are shuttered and Nicolò...he must find a way to reconcile Yusuf with God, and find his way to the Christian faith. 

So he lances the wound that sits between them. “And I understand why you have doubts. What happened in Jerusalem was...it was evil. There is no other word for it. I do not know how men of God or men who took up the cross in His name could have done such things--”

Yusuf interrupts him sharply: “Can you not? Can you truly not?”

And he can. He thinks the word _Saracen_ and what comes to mind is still a dirty, bloodsoaked heathen clutching the head of a Christian in one hand and a golden idol in the other. He doesn’t even quite know where that image comes from, cannot think of a single voice describing such a thing to him, and so there must have been many. 

“The Church is not...like that,” he tries. The words ring hollow in his own ears. He does not know how the Bishop d’Albaro took the news of what happened in Jerusalem, if _Il Papa_ celebrated the butchery or not. Whether _he_ would have celebrated, too, if he hadn’t been there to see it firsthand. He tries again, “The men who led the Crusade were wrong, what they did was wrong, but the Church is not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” Yusuf asks, his voice uncharacteristically flinty.

“When I was young, I was very poor. For some time I lived with my aunt, but then something happened...I do not remember what, I was young, I only knew that I was alone thereafter.” Not so young as to explain the complete absence of that memory; sometimes the void troubles him and other times he is grateful that it has left him. He doubts it was anything good. “Very often the Church fed me, but on the days that I could not find a service, I begged and on the days no one would give me food I stole it, and if I could not do that without being caught then I did not eat. This continued until I joined the seminary, and then it was so strange to eat so much at once, to eat fish and wine, and to have more than one meal a day. The Church...it cares for the poor, when no one else does.”

As he speaks, Yusuf stays silent, listening. Once Nicolò has finished, he sits forward and reaches out, sliding his hand from Nicolò’s elbow to his wrist before pulling away again. It’s a brief but startling touch; Nicolò twitches. 

“That is why you do not eat much, isn’t it?” Yusuf asks, but it’s not a question.

Nicolò’s mouth pops open to deny this, but it would be an untruth. More than once he was commended by his fellow clergy for his frugality, his fasting. The truth is far less devout and much more embarrassing, but Yusuf’s eyes are open to him again, so he admits, “In the first few weeks at the seminary, I would frequently become sick after I ate. Even now, there will be days or weeks when the feel of food in my mouth...is strange to me. I do not know why.”

“I am sorry that you suffered in this way, Nicolò,” Yusuf says, solemn and quiet. 

Nicolò shrugs. “I survived it. Thanks be to God, and His Church.”

Yusuf is still watching him, so Nicolò turns away. He is not ashamed of his past; God loves the poor, and when he was reborn in Christ as Padre Giacomo his sins of thievery were absolved. But he hates the kindness in Yusuf’s eyes. Nicolò is a tool of God and his desire to sit at Yusuf’s side and be understood by him is merely an expression of God’s will; the point of that story was for Yusuf to understand the Church, not him. 

There has been some gathering noise downstairs, but now the voices rise sharply. 

“Get up,” Yusuf says. His face is suddenly blank. He grabs his pack. 

Nicolò grabs his bundle of clothes. It is evening; he has slept through the afternoon and as they pass out into the street through a back stairwell, the rest of the city is shaking themselves awake. Apparently they customarily take a midday rest here as they do in Genoa. Yusuf walks quickly enough that Nicolò does not need to feign at walking behind. 

“Yusuf--”

“Sh.” Yusuf turns a corner sharply, passing along narrow streets through a western gate of the city. Outside of the walls, the breeze blows stronger and Nicolò squints against the sand, drawing the scarf closer to his head. They travel up a hill. It is the time of evening when everything seems sharpened by golden light. The heat has lessened slightly but Nicolò still pants and sweats even in his light tunic as they climb. The way is rocky and he finds himself wholly preoccupied with watching for scorpions or the large snakes that Yusuf has warned him dwell in this land. 

Eventually Yusuf draws to a halt. He turns and points. “Look.”

Bewildered, Nicolò turns. To the west, beyond the far edges of the city, shapes rise out of the desert. They reflect the sinking sun almost like mirrors and cast long shadows over the sands around them. “The pyramids of the Old Kings of Egypt,” Yusuf explains. Nicolò shades his eyes against the sun. “They are much larger than they seem, at this distance. The burial of their kings was of paramount importance to them...each one of those pyramids is a tomb.”

“There is one king buried in each?” 

“Mm, and their queens with them. The tallest is believed to be two hundred and twenty-eight cubits high at its peak and the stones used to build them came from miles away.”

“All of that, for one man?” 

“For their gods. The Egyptians were true heathens: they believed that different gods with the heads of animals carried the sun across the sky and made the rivers flow, but they also believed that their kings became gods after their deaths. If you travel much in this land, you will find all manner of monuments and tombs inscribed with their names and filled with riches unlike anything you can imagine. Death, for them, was an obsession--so much so that it became the focus of their lives.”

Now Nicolò remembers hearing of these pyramids before, though they were described as heathen temples, not tombs. “They look...unreal.” Their sides are smooth and white, blinding in the sunset. Of course, everything is blinding in the sun of this land. Many people wander the streets of this city followed closely by servants--or slaves--who carry a circle of portable shade atop a pole; when Nicolò asked Yusuf how much they cost, he had only laughed. 

“A shame that we do not have more time here. To see them up close is a wonder indeed.”

“We are leaving soon?” It has been a topic of some uncertainty; they are traveling now as passengers instead of traders, which places them at the mercy of others in terms of scheduling. 

“Yes.”

Somewhere nearby, a branch breaks.

“Do not look,” Yusuf says without moving his mouth. He’s still looking at the pyramids. 

Nicolò does not, but he does carefully shift to stand just slightly behind Yusuf, as befits a slave. They are a captured slave and master, admiring the distant pyramids at just the right time of day.

“Did you take my knife?” Yusuf asks. 

“Yes. I did not steal it, there was a--”

“Do you have it with you?”

“Yes.” 

“I’m going to walk away from you. Do not follow me. I have not left you. They may come after me, or they may come after you. If they come after you, I will return.”

Without waiting for an answer he turns and walks away. It takes a conscious force of will not to move after him as he has done for the last month, but Nicolò stays where he is. They are on a slight hillside overlooking the city and he takes a moment to admire the view as he waits for something to happen, hyper-aware of the landscape around him. This far from the river, the lush trees and grasses have given away to scrubland not entirely unlike the land around Jerusalem. Further out, the sands overtake all else, but here there is still relatively thick vegetation, thick enough for a number of men to pass through undetected.

The number turns out to be three. They approach from the city, their curved swords already in their hands. Nicolò turns to face them, his hands carefully held at his sides. They ask him something. He says in Arabic, “I don’t understand.” One of the few things he knows for certain.

They lift their curved swords. 

He dodges the first and manages to stab the second even as he takes a swipe to the side that cuts through his tunic and across his ribs. The second man falls. Does Yusuf have a weapon? He said he would return. He said he has not left Nicolò. 

The first and the third turn on him together and Nicolò instinctively blocks them with his arms. They cut gouges from his flesh and he screams in pain, falling away from them with bleeding limbs. 

He crashes backwards through the bushes, stumbling in the dusty earth, and one of them pursues him, slashing at the branches between them. Nicolò falls, rolls backwards and finds his feet again, the knife held in front of him. 

The other man screams. 

His attacker pauses with his sword upraised, slowly lowers it, and backs away, glancing behind him. Nicolò stays crouched. Blood spills from his forearms, striking the ground near his feet with little _plops_.

Footsteps crunch towards them. Branches get shoved aside as Yusuf sweeps his arms against them. There is blood down the front of his tunic and he has one of those curved swords. He spins it deftly and says to the third man in Arabic, “Your tongue or your life.”

The man spits something back, his gaze darting between Nicolò and Yusuf. He lifts his sword. 

“Your life,” Yusuf agrees, and moves to take it. 

In Jerusalem, Nicolò never had the opportunity to watch Yusuf’s swordplay, being preoccupied with trying to survive it. Now he backs away from the clash of blades, knife still gripped tight in one hand. Already the skin of his forearms itches with what he has come to recognize as healing.

The skill of these two opponents is far beyond him. Yusuf spins and uses the crossguard of his sword to hook around that of his attacker, disarming him only to take a fist to the face. Falling back, he hooks the fallen sword in one foot and kicks it up into his hand. His opponent has a second sword at his hip and draws it, but struggles to keep up with the flurry of blows that Yusuf rains on him. Actual sparks fly from the meeting of their blades. 

Yusuf drives him back to where the three men originally came upon Nicolò. There lies the body of the third man, his head smashed in by a rock. The swordsman does not see it, does not have time to glance away from Yusuf’s whirling blades, and stumbles. 

The opening is all it takes. Yusuf knocks away his blade and slashes his throat, then his chest, then stabs him twice, swiftly, through the chest. 

The man falls, gurgling, struggles for breath, then stills. There is a different noise nearby. The man who Nicolò stabbed is still alive, sitting up and gasping around his chest wound. Yusuf advances on him but Nicolò moves between them, his bloody hand raised. Yusuf draws up hard. His eyes are wild, the way they looked outside of Jerusalem, but even in this moment of bloodlust, faced with Nicolò holding a weapon, he does not strike. 

“Let me do it,” Nicolò says. 

Yusuf blinks, clearly not fully translating the Greek, so Nicolò turns away to face the man on the ground. He gurgles, trying to crawl away; blood spills from his mouth. His eyes plead as Nicolò plants a foot in his chest, shoves him down, and stabs him three times in the gut.

He dies swiftly, shuddering with the futile effort to stay alive. Less than five minutes have passed, and yet they have moved into evening. Already Nicolò can see stars in the sky above them. 

Yusuf stands very still. He is wearing a dark gray robe in the manner of his people, long and straight at the sides. He looks down at the men they have just killed without speaking for a long moment, then seems to come back to himself with a shake. 

“You are hurt?” he says in Arabic, looking at Nicolò’s arms. They have healed already, but the fabric of his tunic sleeves are torn and bloody, as is the right side over his ribs.

“Not hurt,” Nicolò tries to say in Yusuf’s tongue, but either he does not understand or he is beyond understanding, because he drops one of the swords and pulls Nicolò away, barely stopping to retrieve their belongings and tug a scabbard from the belt of one of their attackers. 

Nicolò follows, clumsily tucking the knife away. His hand finds Yusuf’s again as they descend the slope, and their fingers slide together slippery with blood. Yusuf leads him back down the hill to the walls of the city, where he turns right. They are following the river downstream, Nicolò realizes, and soon he understands why: the ground ahead of them slopes down artificially into a half-made tunnel passing underneath the river, just large enough for a man on a horse to travel. It was clearly never finished and water pours through cracks overhead to form a dripping grotto of several pools, the edges of which show that they have dried up and refilled many, many times, perhaps daily. 

Placing the scabbard and scimitar on the edge of one of the pools, Yusuf washes first his hands then his face, which is not actually bloodied. He seems to be falling back on the cleansing ritual that precedes his frequent prayers; the washing seems far more sensible to Nicolò now that he has experienced the heat and sand of a desert.

Nicolò kneels and turns up the sleeves of his robe to rinse his forearms. Underneath the blood, the skin is whole and unbroken; he passes his hands over it several times before moving on to his side. The slash in his tunic will not show if he keeps his arm at his side and should prove relatively easy to mend. Yusuf has already pulled off his tunic to rinse away the blood, so Nicolò does likewise.

As they do so, he asks, “Who were those men?”

Yusuf does not answer for long enough that Nicolò starts to think he won’t. Then he says in a low voice, “They were looking for me.”

In the gathering dark, light glints off the moisture on Yusuf’s skin as he moves, scrubbing his tunic in the shallow water. Nicolò can’t tell if it’s sweat, blood, or water on his skin. “What does that mean?” Nicolò asks.

Yusuf sighs, sitting back on his heels and shaking out his damp tunic. “The Caliphate leadership failed to hold Jerusalem. Iftikhar al-Dawla and al-Afdal Shahanshah were tasked with the defense of the city, but first they mistook the Christian army for mercenaries easy to buy off, and then they let themselves be taken unprepared. Such a thing cannot go unanswered, and al-Afdal will already be organizing a force to retake the Levant; the last thing he needs is someone circulating tales of his incompetence, however accurate they may be. Are you getting all of this?” he inquires, a mean edge to the usual humor in his tone.

Nicolò meets his eyes. “Politics.”

The edge slides away and Yusuf smiles tiredly. “Politics. An aznagi man traveling with a Christian slave is easy enough to find.”

He stands, wringing out his damp tunic. Having only needed to wash a small portion of his own, Nicolò pulls his back on, fingering the tear in its side. “Why did you ask for his tongue?”

Yusuf sighs again. “I had hoped not to kill him. But if he could speak then he could tell his masters where we traveled.” He shakes out his tunic then pulls it on. “Why did you want to kill the third man yourself?”

“Because I didn’t want you to bear the burden of it alone.”

They stand in the crumbled tunnel and the gathering dark, studying one another. “This land seems dangerous for you,” Nicolò comments.

Yusuf laughs softly. “The world is dangerous.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be. We could return to my homeland.”

The look Yusuf sends him is sharp but still amused. “You actually think I would be any safer there?”

 _You might be, if you converted._ But Nicolò does not speak thus, thinking of their conversation earlier and Yusuf’s distrust of the Church. The Christians of Jerusalem were protected, surely Yusuf would be as well, were he a Christian.

“Come on.” Yusuf bends to retrieve their belongings. “We need to find a different caravanserai...it is still another two days before we leave.”

“Is it set, then?”

“Yes.” Yusuf glances out at the fading light, then back at Nicolò. He is struggling with something, far more than he struggled with his choice to kill their attackers. It has been a full month of their company and Yusuf wears the false merchant face less and less, letting Nicolò see the thoughts he hides from others. Nicolò knows that he is a hard man to like, that his quietness makes people think him a plotter; but Yusuf trusts him so easily. He puts himself in Nicolò’s hands, and Nicolò prays with a fervency that he will not fail Yusuf in this. He must save this man.

“We go to ‘Imārat Ṣiqilliya,” Yusuf says. “Sicilia.”

A/N

-“What if someone draws him wrong, are you then not worshipping a false idol?” hits different when you consider how much Christianity whitewashed Jesus in the Middle Ages, and how deeply white supremacy has sunk its claws into modern Christianity. Don’t @ me, I’m Christian. Evangelical Christians worship White Jesus, which is a false idol, and Islam has a good fucking point about aniconism.  
-The Farroḵi referenced is Farroḵi Sistāni, a Persian poet who wrote a great many love poems directed very clearly at men. https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/homosexuality-iii  
-There is a not-insignificant amount of evidence that indicates early Christianity, both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, condoned homosexual marriages. The work of John Boswell is particularly interesting on this subject.  
-The mosque that Yusuf and Nicolò visit is the Mosque of al-Hakim.  
-Much of the description of the pyramids at that time comes from Maghreb scholar ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (1162-1231AD). In his time, 100 years after Nicolò and Yusuf saw them, the pyramids still retained the outer casement stones that made them especially shiny in the sunlight.  
-To be very clear, Yusuf’s comments about Egyptian history and theology are his own personal point of view based on the scholarly writings of the time, and should not be taken as objectively true or accurate in any way.  
-(Also, man is it difficult to find accurate information about medieval accounts of the Egyptian pyramids. Stupid fucking Ancient Aliens show…)  
-I completely cheated the location and existence of the failed tunnel project. In the 1990’s, a tunnel was built as part of the Cairo Metro, but I’m not aware of anyone trying to tunnel under the river Nile in ancient or medieval times.  
-In dealing with the conversion shit: I’m drawing a lot from growing up around conservative Christians. I didn’t actually convert until I was 20, but by then I was away from that environment and realized that I didn’t need to change who I was (queer as shit) in order for God to love me. Nicolò...yeah, he’s not there, yet.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Palermo
> 
> -o-
> 
> Many thank to lady-writes on Tumblr for the sensitivity read. Please note the additional tag for non-con; it is not in the current story and not involving the main characters, but is briefly discussed by them.

Their journey to Sicilia is as passengers instead of a merchant hiring the ship. As such, their accommodations are...somewhat lacking. Aboard the Geniah, they strung individual hammocks below decks, where it was hot and stuffy but they could flail about to their hearts’ content. Here onboard the Radoom, they are technically afforded free run of the lower deck but there are no hammocks nor anywhere to hang them, and thus everyone sleeps in awkward clumps on the hard wood of the deck itself with their belongings tucked underneath their bodies. Nicolò slept much this way on the passage from Genoa to the Levant and so does not find it overly troublesome. 

Yusuf disagrees. “Suck my _balls_ ,” he whispers at the captain’s back the first night they are aboard. Or at least Nicolò is fairly certain of that translation: he has picked up a good amount of what he thinks is Arabic, but with the variety of Yusuf’s ancestry he isn’t entirely sure. 

The wider space of the entire lower deck is not entirely terrible, as it grants them more privacy than the many rows of hammocks. In their corner tucked next to several barrels that they have determined are neither poisonous nor explosive, Nicolò turns to Yusuf and says, “Teach me about your faith.”

Yusuf looks at him with no small amount of surprise. It is not unwarranted: Nicolò knows he has poorly concealed his discomfort every time Yusuf prays. It’s just that they do it so often and so publicly; besides the Eucharist, which he was expected to lead, Nicolò is far more accustomed to solitary contemplation of God, following the command to shut one’s door and pray in secret. For a time he had even thought to retreat completely from the world and live like the Desert Fathers of old, toiling in the earth to survive and relying solely on God for company. 

When Yusuf and his brethren pray, they form lines and stand almost shoulder to shoulder. It does not seem to matter what other ethnic or tribal lines divide them: he had prayed with the Arabs aboard the Geniah who sneered at him for being aznagi, and with the same agents of the Caliphate who later followed him from the mosque to kill him. 

“What do you want to know?” Yusuf asks.

“Assume that I know nothing and start there.”

“I always assume that of you.” Yusuf grins at his own jest. Nicolò rolls his eyes. “But all right. We are the followers of Muhammed, praise be unto him, the final prophet of the God of the prophets ʾĀdam, Ibrāhīm, Mūsā ibn ʿImrān, and ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, the blessings and peace of God be upon them all. God revealed His word to Muhammed, which Muhammed recorded in the holy al-Qurʼān.” He cocks his head at Nicolò. “Is there something specific you wish to know? There are one hundred and fourteen chapters in the al-Qurʼān, I doubt you want to hear about how we butcher livestock.”

“Who was Muhammed?” 

“We grant praise when we say his name,” Yusuf tells him delicately. “He was a trader in the city of Mecca.” Here he stops and stares into space for several moments until Nicolò queries him. “Forgive me, I’ve just realized that I am a trader, too. Oh, I hope we haven’t been chosen as prophets.”

He says this with such alarm that Nicolò can’t help but feel a rush of affection for this man.

“Muhammed, peace be upon him, was a trader,” Yusuf continues. “Notably, he was illiterate, but that did not stop him from being concerned with the failings of the world around him--the injustice, the fighting between tribes, the cruelty and dishonor inflicted upon women. Such was his heart, filled with kindness and righteous light, that though he did not suffer injury himself, he felt the wounds of those who had been wronged, and this troubled him. So in the night he traveled away from his home to a cave, where he pondered these questions. Then, one night, the angel Jibrāʾīl appeared to him and commanded him to write. ‘But I cannot,’ he said, and yet the angel commanded, and so it was.”

“But were there any other witnesses? How did people know that his words came from God?” 

Yusuf holds up a finger, smiling. “You want to hear about miracles. So did the pagans of Meccan, who doubted the word of Muhammed, peace be upon him, and demanded that he prove himself to them. So he lifted his hands to the night sky and the moon was cleft asunder.”

He continues this way, enumerating the works and actions of his prophet and answering Nicolò’s occasional questions easily. There had been little instruction in Nicolò’s religious education on how to convert someone: he was a parish priest, not a missionary, and even then the information had mostly been about how to convert heathens. Meanwhile, here he sits listening to Yusuf describe Jesus (“peace be upon him”) as a great and respected prophet, and glorifying the name of their _shared_ god.

It is so easy to lose the thread of his purpose in this. Yusuf has such an ease to him: they have traveled so many places and everywhere they went, people welcomed him. He fought for a city that wasn’t even his, which--actually--

“How did,” he starts to interrupt, then catches himself. “Forgive me, continue.”

“No, no.” Yusuf cocks his head.

“I only just wondered, you are a merchant. Yet you wield a sword.”

“Ah. Well. That tradition predates the life of Muhammed, peace be upon him. My father sought for me a traditional education, one that encompassed reading, calligraphy, poetry, and swordplay, as with the warrior-poets of old.”

“Did you…? Before...we met, did you fight very often?”

Yusuf’s eyes grow shadowed. “A few. Bandits, mostly, or a prospective buyer who chose instead to try cutting my throat and taking my goods. The world is a dangerous place, and my father wanted me to be able to protect myself. What about you? Did your father and mother dream of your ascension to the papacy? Or did they have different plans for your life?”

He says it so lightly and there is no way he could have known, but Nicolò still freezes. He says, “I have no mother or father.”

“So you were...born from the sea?”

Of course not, no one is, even Christ was born of a woman. But Nicolò cannot--he says, “I have no memory of them.”

Dread and hope fills him in equal measure, but Yusuf asks no further questions. 

The city of Balarm is...well, it’s technically still called Balarm. It is also still mostly Muslim, though some mosques have been given over directly to Christian services. The flags of the ‘Imārat have been cut down and replaced with gray lions in a yellow field, a sight that inspires Nicolò to mumble something in zenéize and flick his hand underneath his chin. 

When he sees Yusuf’s raised eyebrows, he shrugs. “Normaunds. They are liars and brutes, and their language sounds like a madman being strangled.”

Well. Yusuf certainly can’t argue with that. 

The only Normaunds they actually see are a few guards wandering around in their armor and livery, who appear to be more interested in conversing with each other like strangled madmen than causing any trouble. Relieved, Yusuf begins to point out different aspects of the city; he had tragically not felt free to do so in al-Qāhirah, not while so close to the seat of the Caliphate, and the irony does not escape him. 

Here, they walk side-by-side, and he says, “Abi ibn Dinar called this place the noblest island in the sea. Have you been here before?”

“Not to Balarmo. I visited Messina, with the _Balestrieri genovesi_.” He grimaces as he speaks and glances at Yusuf. “We did not stay for long.”

Of course...they would have needed to stop for supplies on the way to al-Quds, and Ibrahim had already closed the ports of Cypros to their ships. Nicolò’s obvious discomfort assuages the sting of its mention, and Yusuf continues. “Messina, well, I’m sure it is lovely. I have not been there myself but here...there is nothing that can compare to the beauty and glory of Balarm.”

He times it well: as he speaks they pass through a long, low archway and emerge into paradise. Around them, the space between the outer port walls and the defenses of the city is filled with winding irrigation canals, date and palm trees, open lawns and shaded walkways. Nicolò actually stops walking, arrested by the sight, and Yusuf laughs, pressing a palm against his back to pull him away from a scowling merchant. 

When they are safely out of the flow of traffic, Yusuf says, “Is it not as I have said? You will not find a more glorious place to rest your weary feet, my friend, not since the garden of Eden itself. The Greeks came first to this island and in the country you will find many of their temples, but it was the Rumans who built irrigation canals. Look, here--you see the aqueduct that brings the water down from above? This is how they fed their great city to the north. For some time the island suffered war between the Franks and Byzantium, until a commander of the Byzantine army, having been disgraced, came to Ifriqiya...came to my people, to ask for aid.”

Nicolò shoots him a surprised glance. Yusuf smiles. “Asad ibn al-Furat, of Āl-Qayrawān, sailed north to take the island, and though he died of plague and the conquest fractured many times, the island came under control of the Aghlabids. I’m given to understand that he was a distant ancestor of mine.” 

“I did not know they were your people.” They have resumed walking, passing along the cobblestone road between the port and the city. Around them, merchant wagons rumble and travelers guide their mounts through the crowd. 

“They did not hold it for long. The Caliphate took control soon enough. But they, too, valued the island highly and improved its ancient waterways. We are all desert people, after all, and there is very little that desert people value more than _this_. ‘When you are so full of sorrow that you cannot walk, cannot cry anymore, think about the green foliage that’--what the _shit_ is that?”

He had started to gesture around them at the lush greenery, then stopped when the arc of his hand passed over something utterly alien to him. It looks to be some kind of bird, larger than a chicken and iridescent blue around the neck and head. From its hindquarters erupts a fountain.

“Oh, it’s,” Nicolò says, “it’s. I know this.” He presses the side of his hand to his forehead, his fingers speared outward. Someone yells at them and it is his turn to grab Yusuf’s arm, pulling them both out of the road. “I can’t remember the word in Greek-- _pavone_. It’s a bird.”

“I can tell that. Are those feathers?” The creature stands a few yards away from them and is strutting about. Its tail display shimmers and shivers in the sun. 

“Yes. Have you never seen one before? They come from the east.”

“I can’t say that I have.” The bird opens its mouth and issues a wailing cry. “Wallahi, they are loud!”

“They are. There was a monastery outside of d’Albaro, where I grew up...they kept a whole flock. They screamed at all hours.” The bird wails again and Nicolò points at it. “First thing in the morning. Middle of the night. It doesn’t matter.”

It wails and to Yusuf’s utter delight, Nicolò actually yells back in perfect imitation of its cry. Several people turn and he takes his companion by the shoulder, pulling him onward. 

“What is your homeland like?” Yusuf asks. 

“Oh,” Nicolò says in the voice of someone who has been waiting to answer, “do you remember what you said about mountains?”

They pass into the city itself while Nicolò describes a whole range of snow-capped peaks that cover the northern sky. He is no poet, but Yusuf still finds himself captivated as he half-leads, half-follows Nicolò through the streets. They pause occasionally to take in the sights: Nicolò seems particularly charmed by the aqueducts, surely being somewhat familiar with them. It hadn’t occurred to Yusuf before that Nicolò might be homesick, but surely he is. Sicilia is by no means Genoa, but they...maybe speak something similar? It sounds similar to Yusuf, but he hesitates to say thus to Nicolò. Certainly there are more people here who look like Nicolò, enough that he blends in instead of standing out. Grudgingly, Yusuf must admit that an Aznagi man traveling with a Christian is not so noticeable here. 

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t note the Christian priest officiously hanging a cross above the entrance of a mosque. Yusuf grits his teeth and keeps walking.

Their destination is a café. Yusuf, familiar with the establishment, walks in easily enough and within three steps knows that something has gone awry here. The place is empty except for a trio of Normaunds who sit at a table in the center of the room, barely clothed and stinking; they drink and laugh and speak in their tongue, glancing over the new arrivals with little interest. 

The proprietress, Nadja, appears with a pinched expression on her face. She speaks at first in what must be Normaund then blinks and exclaims, “Yusuf? Is that you?”

“Ey!” shouts one of the Normaunds, and reaches out to tug at Nadja’s tunic. She flinches away as he gives what is clearly a command.

Yusuf’s father passed many lessons on before his death, foremost among them being the command that he should never leap to violence without first extending diplomacy. It has, however, been a very difficult three months in which the entire fucking world seems to have forgotten the very concept of diplomacy or common courtesy. Still, he _knows_ that even Christians do not touch women this way unless they mean it disrespectfully. So he grabs the man’s wrist. “Do not touch her.”

It does not surprise him when the Normaund takes offense, or when the others stand. What surprises him is how quickly Nicolò lands at his side, drawing the knife that Yusuf bought him after their last adventure. 

The fight, such as it is, is fortuitously one-sided. The Norsemen are drunk and slovenly with what appears to be an extended, likely unwelcome stay. Yusuf cuts down one easily enough, then dances with the second and actually goes to the floor with him, wrestling furiously until he slowly, relentlessly sinks the tip of a knife into the man’s chest. The rest of the blade follows and the man under him convulses, choking at first for breath then for anything, then not at all.

His face is far too close as the life leaves his white-rimmed eyes. Yusuf turns his face away.

The third man is on the floor with Nicolò at his back, a knife buried in his thigh. Shaking away the dead man’s hands, Yusuf rises to help, but such aid is not required: Yusuf has only just regained his feet when Nicolò bares his teeth and sinks them into the side of the man’s neck. The Normaund screams and thrashes, trying to push Nicolò away, which only serves to tear his own flesh that much easier. Blood spurts and Nicolò falls back, his arms and legs wrapped around his opponent’s torso as the Normaund’s movements falter, slow, and finally still. 

“Um,” Yusuf says. 

Nicolò pushes the man’s body off of him and stands, wiping his bloody mouth with the back of his sleeve. “You are well?” he asks, frowning at Yusuf.

“Yes,” Yusuf says. “Thank you. I was going to suggest that I teach you how to use a sword at some point, but you know, I think I have changed my mind. Flinging yourself teeth-first at armed men suits you.” 

To his horror, he completely and utterly fails to modulate his tone--or even realize before he speaks that he _needs_ to modulate his tone--and the words emerge from his lips ripe with lust. Nicolò, ever watchful, always so still, cocks his head in response. His hair and beard have grown longer in the time that they have traveled together, and both have lightened significantly in the sun. At the present moment blood and possibly some viscera are streaked in his hair, and Yusuf’s horror compounds as he realizes _this is not a deterrent_. The spark of interest that he has foolishly entertained for the two months of their acquaintance has grown into something far stronger than he was prepared to admit to himself, and now he is having this realization in front of Nicolò, who is watching his face with a growing furrow between his brows.

Fortunately, at that moment Nadja pokes her head out from behind an overturned table. “You are alive?”

“Yes, Bismillah.” Yusuf quickly glances them over, but neither he nor Nicolò have any visible mortal wounds. He smiles reassuringly at Nadja. “I am sorry for having created such a disturbance…”

“That’s what you call a disturbance?” she exclaims, clambering to her feet. “Maryam, close the windows. Adje, fetch me three blankets from upstairs, as big as you can find!”

The speed with which Nadja organizes her daughters to wrap the bodies, clean their blood from the floor, and set the room to rights serves to remind Yusuf of what a formidable woman he has always found her to be. Were he an older man...but he met her at his father’s side, beardless and wide-eyed, and no matter how old he becomes, she will always see him this way. Her embrace of greeting is strictly maternal, though far bolder than appropriate even for a woman of her age. 

Why is the world so full of inconveniently attractive people?

“A shame that you came now,” she says once the worst of it has been cleared away. “I just paid a woman in the city to bring me poison, in a week I would have been rid of them myself! But let me look at you. Grown so handsome and strong!” She glances over at Nicolò, takes in the blood around his mouth, the general… _Nicolò_ of him, and visibly decides not to engage. “I am glad to see you again, Yusuf, you are always welcome at my door.” 

The bodies get rolled to a corner. At some point in the next hour, which Yusuf and Nicolò spend ensconced in an alcove by the window, the bodies disappear. Yusuf does not worry overmuch about what happens to them; Nadja is an excellent businesswoman and that means she is proficient at a great many things. If Nicolò observes anyone coming in, he does not mention it. He does step out the back door briefly to dunk his head in a bucket of rainwater. 

They are delivered wine, which Yusuf elects to indulge in for once. That turns out to be a bold choice, as the wines of Sicilia are notoriously strong and he is by no means experienced on the subject, having lived and traveled mostly in countries where drinking was frowned upon. 

After one cup he feels the muscles in his legs loosen. After two he finds himself speaking louder, waving his hands about more, and thinks that he understands the people of this country better for it. Once the bodies in the corner have disappeared, Nadja reopens for the day and other people come in; at that point she starts bringing them a lemon-flavored drink that looks very much like tea, but Yusuf has a terrible feeling is even more alcoholic than wine.

However it happens, by the time evening has rolled into night he is very much drunk. Nadja discreetly points them at a side stairwell, which Nicolò helps him ascend. Upstairs is unlike the traveling inns to which he is accustomed: there are far more rooms, a whole hallway of them, and belatedly Yusuf wonders if Nadja and her daughters run a brothel. Certainly his father would never have alerted him to that fact, even if he partook of the services...but they only ever came here for food and wine, so far as he remembers. 

“Nicolò,” he whispers urgently. “This might be a brothel.”

“Of course it is. Did you not notice when the girl sat in my lap and I almost fell out of my chair trying to get away from her?”

Twisting around, Yusuf stares at him. “When did that happen?” Except he does remember Nicolò falling out of his chair; he had laughed at that, thinking him drunk. Right now Nicolò looks...relatively sober. Relative to Yusuf, anyway. “I didn’t mean to bring us to a brothel.”

Nicolò rolls his eyes and guides Yusuf through a doorway. “That is good to know. Come here, lie down.”

He tries to push Yusuf down on a bed. Yusuf resists, blinking away his drunkenness. “What time is it? I need to pray.”

Nicolò doesn’t answer and so Yusuf staggers around the room until he finds a pitcher of water and clumsily douses his hands with it, wincing at his lack of grace. 

“You don’t have to,” Nicolò says, and Yusuf turns to squint at him. The room is spinning, but he manages to find Nicolò at its center, seated on the bed. “You could pray with me instead, if you want. I would like that very much.”

If Yusuf’s words had slipped with lust, earlier, he now hears the longing in Nicolò’s voice just as clearly. 

It’s as if Nicolò reached across the room and took him by the chin. Following that grasp, he crosses to Nicolò and puts his hands on Nicolò’s cheeks. A moment of utter stillness spreads like dye dropped into water. Nicolò stares up--Yusuf is standing so close, he should be lower so that Nicolò does not hurt his neck. He tries to drop to his knees and winds up kneeling on the bed next to Nicolò, whose arms encircle his waist and keep him from falling backwards onto the floor.

“You are so thin,” Yusuf says.

“What?” 

Yusuf rubs his thumb over the edge of Nicolò’s cheekbone. So many angles to him. “You’re so thin, but still strong.”

Nicolò stares at him. Yusuf knows firsthand that Nicolò can spend long minutes at it, but he’s a man of the modern world and he has the patience of one. He slides the pad of his thumb to tug down Nicolò’s lower lip, then covers it with his mouth.

Nicolò’s mouth tastes like lemons--the liqueur they were served. Breath stutters against his cheek and Nicolò twitches closer to him, opening and unfurling with the sweetness of spring, the loveliness of something newly made. Oh, there is such art to this artlessness, such grace to Nicolò’s clumsy press of lips; there is no pretension in any part of him, body or soul, and all that Yusuf touches, sees, smells, hears in this moment is Nicolò in full. No hidden agendas, nothing that Yusuf needs to guard against. It has been...so long. Always he has to guard some part of himself, but Nicolò is so far removed from the many complexities of Yuysuf’s life that for once, he can simply _want_.

They have killed each other. Yusuf has not forgotten that. But somehow the previous violence makes the slide of their hands and the meeting of their mouths all the sweeter. They could hurt one another but they choose not to. The mouth that Nicolò offers him so tentatively is the same one that tore a man’s throat out earlier today.

Yusuf takes that mouth again and again, winding his fingers through the fine, soft hair of his companion. He groans as he feels palms wind across his ribs, clutching at his back and his shoulders and chest, then quite tragically pushing him away.

The room is spinning somewhat and one of the candles has burned down, so Yusuf has a bit of trouble focusing on Nicolò’s face. What he sees here is like a bucket of icewater on his head, instantly sobering. Nicolò looks… _afraid_. 

He moves back, suddenly breathless. “I am sorry.”

His apology gets no response, but when Yusuf tries to leave the bed, Nicolò grabs at him. In that wavering space, Yusuf bends to nature and his still-spinning head and lies down with an elaborate sigh, feigning more drunkenness than he currently feels to give them both a path out of treacherous uncertainty. 

For a moment Nicolò hesitates; then he lies down at Yusuf’s side, closer to the door. 

They have shared a bed or slept at each other’s sides every night since Ashkelon, but now everything has changed. 

Nicolò lies stiff and unmoving. He wears the tunic and loose pants that Yusuf bought him in Cypros, having mended the tear in the side. Normally he would strip down to the linen undershirt that he wears against his skin and even with the window open now, he is sweltering. Yusuf, too, wears most of his clothes but he is better accustomed to the heat. At least he has always claimed to be. 

Glancing over at him now to check, Nicolò finds Yusuf watching him. It’s difficult to read his expression, for once, and that hurts in a strange way: many times Nicolò has watched Yusuf put on a mask designed for the gaze of another, but it has been weeks since he hid himself from Nicolò in such a way. 

That he feels the need to do so now is more wrong than anything else could be.

Nicolò rolls onto his side. Yusuf watches him do so, unmoving. This seems only fair, since he was the one to walk across a room first and touch Nicolò’s cheek; now it is Nicolò’s turn to reach out. He rests his hand on the side of Yusuf’s face. Yusuf closes his eyes but stays frustratingly still. Yusuf confessed to immodesty, before, so presumably he has...done something. With someone. Which is more than Nicolò. Surely he should be...taking control here, he is the one who knows what to do.

But maybe that is why he holds back. Nicolò doesn’t quite know what is happening in this bed between them, but he has some idea, dammit, and if Yusuf isn’t going to take the lead, then he is.

Pushing up onto his elbow, he leans over Yusuf to kiss his mouth. That much is fairly self-explanatory, or so he thinks. When Yusuf starts to respond with his tongue--well, that’s rather surprising and not entirely pleasant. Not _un_ pleasant, just...unexpected and very slippery. Fortunately Yusuf seems to sense his hesitation and backs off to the kissing that they both enjoyed before. Their hands wander up and down each other’s bodies, rubbing over hip bones and stroking through hair. Nicolò loses himself in it, relieved when Yusuf starts to guide his head in a way that lets their lips meet more easily, again and again. Yusuf’s beard tickles. It’s longer than Nicolò’s, and while at first it feels soft, as they continue the skin around his mouth and jaw starts to feel abraded, like a sunburn.

Eventually Yusuf mumbles, “Too hot,” and they both sit up to peel off their clothes, shaky and fumbling in the dark. Separated from Yusuf even by a few inches, Nicolò’s mind comes back to life and flings thoughts at him as rocks through a window pane. There are...many, but he fixates on one in particular.

“My father raped my mother,” he says as he peels off his tunic. “Or at least I think he did. I did not lie before: I never knew them. So I’m not sure if that’s something that someone told me, or if I just knew it from the first moment I took breath.”

He stands beside the bed to undo the ties of his trousers. Focused thus, he doesn’t notice the stillness on the bed until Yusuf asks, very carefully, “Why do you mention this right now?”

Nicolò looks up. Yusuf is kneeling on the bed, shirtless, which is...distracting, but Nicolò manages to explain, “I’ve never wanted to lie with a woman, or anyone. When one commits a mortal sin, God visits iniquity upon the sinner’s children, and the children’s children to the third or fourth generation. I never wanted--I was born with that in me. But I do swear that I do not wish to do you any harm or--well, I cannot get you with child, but I would not--dishonor you--”

“Nicolò.” Yusuf takes him by the sides, in the soft place just below his ribs, and tugs him onto his knees on the bed. By now he is entirely uncovered but Yusuf still wears his trousers and Nicolò pushes him down on the bed to undo them. Yusuf laughs. Laughing is good. He arches his hips to help Nicolò strip them from his legs; his prick springs free as they do so and Nicolò’s eyes fix on that, followed quickly by his mouth. This, he knows, is a thing that is done: it was a frequent confession from his parishioners, one that often made him recoil from behind the screen. They always made it sound so disgusting, but perhaps that was just the result of--well, Nicolò can admit that bathing so frequently has its benefits in this regard. 

“Ngh,” Yusuf says. “Nm, _teeth_ , habibi, please mind your teeth.”

How he’s meant to do that, Nicolò has no idea. His teeth are in his mouth, how can he do this and…? He mouths at Yusuf cautiously, mostly using his lips and tongue in a way that must feel good, from the noises that Yusuf is making. 

Yusuf spreads his legs and Nicolò takes a moment to resituate himself, kneeling over him. “What do you want me to do?” he asks. 

Yusuf gazes up at him. They’ve left the candle burning, both too unwilling to leave one another alone long enough to do so, and now Nicolò is grateful for the illumination. There is such tenderness in those eyes: they move up and down Nicolò’s body and he feels it like a physical touch as surely as the fingers that Yusuf strokes over his arm. _This is how people are meant to feel_ , he thinks wildly. _This is how other people feel about each other all the time and I have never understood it before this moment._

“Come here,” Yusuf says, and Nicolò belatedly realizes it’s in Arabic. Or what Nicolò thinks is Arabic. He hopes that it isn’t; he hopes that it’s whatever language Yusuf learned in the cradle, the first words of love spoken to him finding their way somehow to Nicolò’s ear.

He does go where Yusuf asks, leans low over him and rests his weight partially on Yusuf’s chest. It brings them closer together and he hisses through his teeth as their bodies align, one against each other. Yusuf tips them to the side and hooks one leg across Nicolò’s hip, keeping them close. 

“I want you,” Yusuf says, and Nicolò closes his eyes, shuddering all over. His prick presses against Yusuf’s, which is still slick from Nicolò’s mouth. “Like this, give me your hand, habibi. Like this, together.”

They lie facing inward, trading kisses, with their legs tangled and their desire for one another cradled between them. Nicolò finds himself desperately grateful for the weight of Yusuf’s leg draped across him; his hips want to move on their own, the instinct of an animal, and it takes focus that his alcohol-blurred mind lacks at the moment not to shamefully give in to that instinct. Fear bubbles on the back of adrenaline, but Yusuf presses close to bury his face in Nicolò’s neck, sucking and licking at the skin there, and Nicolò moans, letting him. Yusuf is strong; Yusuf knows how to use a sword. He wouldn’t let Nicolò hurt him. 

A strange sensation builds in Nicolò’s whole torso, from his groin to his shoulders. He tries to tell Yusuf that they need to pause until he can figure out what is happening, but it’s too late and a bubble of light bursts inside of him. Wetness fills his hand and for a bewildered, horrified moment he thinks he’s lost control of his bowels and pissed himself. Then Yusuf makes a broken noise and his body shudders, pressing against Nicolò, who clutches at him blindly. 

They pant together. The bed between them is...not pleasant. Seed, Nicolò realizes, that’s what the Bible meant by seed. They’ve spilled it on the ground together--or the equivalent thereof--and his mouth wobbles at the thought. 

Yusuf moves first, sitting up and eyeing the mess they’ve made with a soft laugh. Nicolò props himself onto one elbow but anything beyond that seems impossible; in the aftermath of such bliss his body doesn’t feel like its own, as if the force of their mutual desire has remade him completely. He watches Yusuf retrieve one of their tunics--Nicolò’s, it looks like--and wipe himself dry before turning to Nicolò and repeating the process with the clumsy care of someone who is still drunk. 

He looks at Nicolò’s face and laughs again, smiling in such delight. “What?” Nicolò asks, but Yusuf only shakes his head, laying the tunic over the mess on the bed and beckoning. 

He lies down with his bright gaze still fixed on Nicolò’s face. It’s overwhelming: in the dying light of the candle, Yusuf is all dark hair and shining eyes, stretching his beautiful body like a cat. He reaches out and Nicolò--can’t, he gets up and goes over to the candle, blowing it out. 

He does come back to the bed, though he lies down on his side facing away from Yusuf. A hand touches his back hesitantly. “Nicolò?”

Breath shudders through his body but words escape him. Reaching behind him, he finds Yusuf’s hand and draws it over his side to his front. There is something strange happening in his chest, a squeezing sensation, and tears leak from his eyes.

The bed shifts and Yusuf’s lips touch the back of his shoulder. Nicolò chokes, clutching at the arm around his waist. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why--”

“Shhhh,” Yusuf says against his neck. Nicolò presses back against his warmth, fitting himself into the curve of Yusuf’s body. “Go to sleep, Nicolò.”

A/N

-Palermo, Italy has been called the most conquered city in the world. At various points in history, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards, French, and Italians have laid claim to it and the rest of Sicily.  
-The poem that Yusuf starts to recite before being rudely interrupted by the peacock was written by Omar Khayyám.  
-Here’s the thing about Yusuf: he doesn’t believe. Yusuf is a reasonably observant Muslim but as he said before, there’s no reason that God would choose him for anything. He still thinks he’s going to go home to a normal life; he hasn’t figured out yet that, while he might not have stayed dead, his life as he knew it is over. He’s been Chosen and he doesn’t get it. Nicky does, but he’s drastically misunderstood what they were both chosen _for_.   
-I headcanon Nicolò as demisexual, but his understanding of human sexuality is limited by his time period and personal experience. When he thinks, “this is how people are meant to feel” while experiencing sexual attraction to Yusuf, that’s very much him discovering how the majority of the population experiences sexual attraction, not a universal experience. I’m asexual myself so that’s definitely _not_ a thing that I think people are “meant to feel.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Palermo
> 
> -o-
> 
> This is a long chapter and there's a lot to warn for. More discussion of a character's eating disorder, some very fucked up religious prejudice on Nicolò's part, Yusuf struggling with PTSD, and plenty of canon-typical violence including a limb amputation.

Nicolò wakes first, as has become customary. Yusuf is a man of many talents, but rising promptly in the morning is not one of them. Nicolò, meanwhile, sleeps lightly and wakes many times in the night. He has grown accustomed to blinking awake and checking their surroundings: Yusuf, their belongings, their weapons.

Now he moves slowly, twisting and squirming on the bed by degrees while holding Yusuf’s arm in place across his waist, until he can see Yusuf’s face. Nothing seems to have disturbed him: not Nicolò’s movement, not the faint call of the muezzin in the street, nor the sunlight pouring in through the window. 

In that light of day, Nicolò eases up onto one arm to better study Yusuf. He touches delicate fingers to his hair, tugging one curl out to its full length then letting it spring back against Yusuf’s forehead. It feels very different than Nicolò’s hair; he’s observed that the tight curls seem to keep out dirt and dust. 

They are equal in the width of their shoulders, but Yusuf is curved with more muscle. It feels so good under Nicolò’s finger pads, warm and alive and...soft, but firm? He encounters a jagged place in the skin and leans closer to peer at Yusuf’s side just above his hip. An old scar. Strange. It must have come from Yusuf’s childhood. 

His examination continues. Like Nicolò, Yusuf is darker in the face and lower arms, while paler across his chest and upper legs; but even this light skin is darker than Nicolò’s when he looks between their chests. 

Then there is the matter of...well, Nicolò had touched his prick last night, both with hand and mouth, but the light had been dark and he’d been drunk. Now he shuffles down the bed until they are aligned again, not quite lying against each other. Besides the difference in color, it seems as though Yusuf’s…it’s slightly larger than Nicolò’s but it’s also…

“You look so confused,” Yusuf says.

Nicolò looks up, caught. Yusuf has one eye slitted open--that much and no more. 

“It’s,” Nicolò says. “Interesting.”

“Mmf.” Without moving his head, Yusuf looks down. He is, Nicolò realizes, suffering from last night. “I am circumcised.” 

“I can see that.” He knows what Yusuf must think of him: the ignorant fool who knows nothing of the world...perhaps even more so after last night. He does ask, “They do that when you are young, yes?” When Yusuf nods, he concludes, “So whatever miracle has befallen us, it applies only to the hereafter. A new covenant between us and God.”

“Hm. It also doesn’t apply to headaches.”

Slipping from the bed, Nicolò retrieves a jug from the table along with a cup. He brings both to Yusuf, filling the cup as he walks. Yusuf watches him with a faint smile then murmurs, “Thank you,” as he takes the offered cup. 

He drinks then drinks again when Nicolò refills the cup, all while watching Nicolò over the rim. When he is finished he takes the jug and sets it and the cup down on the floor before holding out his arm. “Come here.” 

Nicolò goes, kissing Yusuf’s mouth. He tastes like the cool water. When they part for breath he wraps his arms around Yusuf’s shoulders and rests a cheek against his shoulder. Last night Yusuf had practically crawled into his lap, but now he is the one held in Yusuf’s. Beneath his spread legs he can feel Yusuf’s sex awaken to him. 

“I didn’t understand this before,” he says.

“What part?”

“Lust. It was the one sin my parishioners always wanted to confess--sometimes it felt more like bragging than confessional. Priests are meant to set aside such desires, but I never...even felt its absence, as if God made me not to feel such things. But I was wrong, He made me to feel such things about you and no one else.”

The body against and underneath his shakes as Yusuf laughs. “You say such things. You will slay me with nothing but your words.”

Nicolò lifts his head. Yusuf is smiling, but he still asks, “Have I offended?”

“No. I only meant that you are very...yourself.”

“What else would I be?”

For some reason that makes Yusuf close his eyes and laugh more. “I don’t know!”

Nicolò still feels like he’s missed something, but Yusuf’s hands have slid down to palm his ass so Nicolò pushes him back down on the bed. 

They spend most of the morning in that narrow bed, until a particularly energetic bout of lovemaking upends them onto the floor, whereupon Nicolò, who had been thoroughly enjoying Yusuf tutelage in how to better use his mouth, insists on employing his lessons _now_.

Yusuf talks him down to simultaneous learning and practice, which turns out to be both a fantastic and terrible idea that lasts them the rest of the morning: the remnants of their desire to kill one another manifests in mutual determination not to spill first.

Eventually, Yusuf wins by pressing his fingers just behind Nicolò’s balls, which is apparently the best way to cheat. 

After that they clean up as best they can with the last of the water and stagger downstairs. Thanks be to God, Nadja and her daughters are preoccupied in the kitchen and do not notice when they slink out the front door, so they are spared any knowing glances. Their belongings they have left in the room, as Yusuf assures him that Nadja will not steal them. It still feels strange to walk the street with nothing on his shoulders. Nicolò knows his hair is in disarray, though the skin irritation from Yusuf’s beard is already gone. 

At least Yusuf is in a similar state. Nicolò steals glances at him as they walk, and more than once catches Yusuf doing the same right back. He hopes that Yusuf knows where they’re going; Nicolò could very easily walk into the sea in his current frame of mind. 

Fortunately Yusuf does know where he’s going: he leads Nicolò to a marketplace and immediately buys them oranges. It is late in the year and the fruit are at the start of their season, firm to the touch. Yusuf buys three then juggles them with a sly look as he walks away from the marketplace into a side street. 

Nicolò rolls his eyes but follows. When he is close enough he snatches one out of midair. “Wait,” Yusuf says, and tosses him a second. The third he sets about peeling himself, still moving until they stand in a narrow alley. Above them, rows of hanging wash obscure the sky and nearly brush their heads. 

“Am I not allowed to eat?” Nicolò asks with both hands full.

“You are.” Yusuf splits open the fruit; its sweet, tart scent fills the air. “I wondered, perhaps, that it might help with your difficulties if you thought of food in a different way.”

Nicolò blinks. It is a bright day, and the various clothing that hangs above them are extravagantly colored in the fashion of this land. “What way?” He hadn’t been aware there was any different way to think about food.

Yusuf answers by bringing a segment of orange up to Nicolò’s mouth. 

The smell fills his nose, just as bright as the day or Yusuf’s brown eyes, as everything about Yusuf that has overpowered any reservations that Nicolò could think of. He is _bright_ in a dark world. Nicolò opens for him and bites down. The orange slice bursts in his mouth, spreading its juice across his tongue with the sweet promise of spring in the wintertime. He chews with his eyes on Yusuf’s watchful face and swallows. 

Leaning in, Yusuf presses a kiss to his mouth. Nicolò closes his eyes and thinks, _Dixit quoque Dominus Deus non est bonum esse hominem solum_.

When he opens his eyes another piece of orange awaits him, followed by another kiss. Yusuf feeds him the whole orange, then stands there kissing him for a long while as if chasing the taste in Nicolò’s mouth. Eventually Nicolò has to be the one who leads them back onto the street; they can’t stay in the alley forever, as much as he wants to, and they can’t live on oranges. Yusuf seems to blink back to awareness, though he reaches out to take Nicolò by the hand as they walk, and after a moment resumes the lead. They find a merchant selling meat pies then follow the smell of the sea to a bluff overlooking the ocean. The city is built right into the edges of the surf, as if daring the ocean to rise up and sweep away stalls, merchants, and children. 

“God, it is hot,” Yusuf says.

“We came from the desert.”

“Yes, but that was _dry_. The air here makes me sweat. Bismillah.” He takes a bite of the meat pie. “In my home, we live between the desert and the sea. The wind blows the air clean, and the sky--it is breathtaking. You could never forget yourself, there, or your place in the spinning of creation. All you have to do is look up and know that the beauty around you must be made by a loving hand, for how else could it exist? How could God make such a place, if He did not care for us?”

“And you think I say distracting things.”

Yusuf laughs, gesturing with a hand before licking crust from his thumb. “I spout poetry. You--it’s the difference between slicing a man to death with a hundred skillful cuts or just, I don’t know, hitting him in the head with a large hammer.”

“I am the hammer?”

“Yes, you are the hammer.” Yusuf grins at him. His jawline is...Nicolò has to look away. Do other people walk around feeling like this all the time? How do they get anything else _done?_

By the time they finish eating, it is well past noon. Nicolò hears a distant muezzin but Yusuf makes no move to stand. He says in careful Arabic, “Today we should talk only like you.”

Yusuf looks at him in surprise then pleasure. “All right, if you wish. Come on, I want to see if Al-Khalesa still stands.”

They travel down even closer to the water, which bubbles up from the ground in places. Here, there are even fewer Normaunds and far more Arabs, though they are by no means the only ones: there are Greeks and Jews and a few men with skin so dark it seems blue. Even Yusuf looks at them with some wonderment. Genoa is by no means a Frankish backwater, but the Al-Khalesa district feels like fragments of a dozen different countries packed into one quarter of the city, spanned by vine-covered stone arches. It does not prove hard to speak only Arabic, as the language surrounds them on all sides.

Here and there, though, are the signs of more ancient roots. They pass a mosaic that is distinctly Roman: Christ stands in the center flanked on both sides by the apostles, their heads surrounded by gold tiles. Nicolò finds himself arrested by the steadiness of the Savior’s gaze.

Yusuf, too, examines the mosaic with interest, and after a moment he nudges Nicolò. “You see? It’s as I said--a Roman artist makes ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, look more Roman.”

Nicolò frowns. “You think He looks Roman?”

“You don’t? It is not just the style that makes it seem this way...look at the nose. It is very much like yours.”

“Maybe, but He is more dark than me. More like you.”

“Like me?” Yusuf laughed. “All right, I suppose so. But that just proves my point. Many of the other depictions I have seen make him lighter, like you. So what is the truth?”

Nicolò ponders it. “I do not know that it matters. The artist made message correctly.”

“And what message is that?”

“God’s love for us. Look at His eyes. Tell me I am wrong.”

Yusuf’s gaze turns contemplative as he studies that of the Lord. Watching him, Nicolò thinks of the vision he’d had when he was young: a boy several years older than him, brown-skinned, with curly black hair. He’d been drawing water from a well. Behind him and looming above had been a large tree, long-dead and barren of leaves, with craggy branches stretched out almost menacingly over the boy’s head. Above all hung the dome of an improbably blue sky. 

The boy had been singing to himself as he pulled up the bucket. When he’d glanced up, Nicolò had seen his eyes were filled with such softness and love, it had felt like a spear through Nicolò’s heart. Or at least it had at the time--he’s actually had a spear through the heart, now, and it didn't feel good at all, even when Yusuf was on the other end.

“You are not wrong,” Yusuf says, bringing Nicolò’s attention back to the present. “But to me it seems that way with all art—all things are made by God, and in the beauty of nature I see His purest expressions, but also in the art of men, for God made the grape so that we could make the wine.”

They resume walking. A few merchants try to waylay them, but Yusuf disentangles them with no hurt feelings. He slides into a new persona as he does so: light, friendly, perhaps a bit foolish, someone who should be an easy mark but somehow eludes them, but never leaves them feeling _fooled_. Nicolò has watched him slip between many different faces in their time together. The merchant face, of course, then the slightly crass, defensive man he became while talking to Abu aboard the Geniah, then the watchful killer in Cairo. 

_A hundred skillful cuts_. But how exhausting must that be?

It feels good to simply walk through the city together: in Cypros they had still been recovering, while in Cairo the eyes of the Caliphate had dogged their steps. In Jerusalem and Ashqelon...he pushes the memories of those places away before they can catch around his ankles and pull him to a place he does not want to go.

Yusuf’s fingers brush his, briefly squeezing them. When he glances over, Yusuf is watching him with a question in his eyes. It is the same look, the same gentleness in him, and it pains Nicolò to know that he ever hurt this man. That he had aimed a bow across a field at a Saracen, someone that Nicolò had barely thought of as human, and pulled the release without any hesitation.

 _Forgive me_ , he thinks but fears to say. Those wounds are so newly healed in ways their bodies do not show. Instead he smiles back and squeezes Yusuf’s fingers.

They pass on through a fog of meat-flavored mist. Nicolò swiftly realizes they have stepped up onto a walkway where a cook has just applied his daily meat to the sizzling pan in front of him, complete with some very pungent onions and other, less familiar spices. Either Yusuf is more familiar with these spices or he did not catch such a potent whaff, because he grabs Nicolò and leads him onwards with a laugh, while Nicolò has to press his eyes to relieve the pain. 

They walk for a while longer on what Nicolò eventually realizes, through his blurred vision, is the city’s inner wall. He thinks that Yusuf must know someone among the guard here to be so trusted this way. From this elevation, they have a sprawling view of the combined farmlands and gardens outside, between the city and the port. To the west and south, the ground rises in a series of plateaus, topped by a half-crumbled temples and other monuments. 

“To the south of here--”

“Arabic,” Nicolò reminds him. He knows his own grasp of that language is awkward, but how is he to learn? 

Yusuf rolls his eyes but obliges with a smile. “To the south of here,” he says in Arabic, “beyond the mountain range, there is a valley of temples. I will need to travel that way, soon, without you.” Nicolò glances at him sharply. “Only for a few days. I have business with a man and it would...be easier if you were not with me. I am not even sure he survived the changing of power, and in order to find him I may have to ask at doors where a Christian face would not be welcomed right now.”

He says it without judgment. Nicolò still feels a chill. “Will you be safe?” he asks.

“Yes. I cannot die, remember?”

That isn’t what Nicolò means, but he can’t quite put into words what is in his head. Instead he says, “How long?”

“Two days, maybe three if he is hard to find. I need to buy grain from him to take back to my homeland, and if he is dead or gone then I need to find a different merchant willing to trade. I do wish you could come with me, the land there is filled with trees bearing the sweetest fruit and hillsides of golden grain. If you have been to Messina, then you have seen the Mountain of Fire, yes? The ash makes the land here especially fertile, so much that the Greeks believed it to be blessed by their gods. 

“I have seen the mountain. Padre Johannes told me about the--how do you say, the smoke and the fire, explosion?”

“Eruption. My father told me about it, too. He was a child when it happened. The sky to the north went black.”

“For us, too. In the south.” Nicolò has a much better grasp of Yusuf’s homeland, now: it is to the southwest, while Genoa is north. They have come far in their travels together. In truth, Jerusalem was almost as far for Yusuf to travel as it was for Nicolò, and he spent three weeks in the belly of a Genoese ship. 

“What day is it?” he asks.

Yusuf frowns. “You know, I don’t know. I was just wondering that, too.”

They stop to ask someone, an elderly man carrying books, but the answer is absolutely incomprehensible to Nicolò. Apparently Saracens use a different method of tracking time that involves their prophet and the moon. In any case, it is the twentieth day of the eleventh month of their calendar, which causes Yusuf some consternation. 

“I do not think I fasted properly for a single day of Ramadan,” he says grimly. “We were too busy fighting. In my faith, it is haram to fight during Ramadan--unfortunate that no one told the Franks.”

It takes a good deal of discussion and some math--Yusuf toils through that on his own, being a learned merchant man of the world and not an impoverished former priest who can mostly write his own name--to figure out that it is early October by the Gregorian calendar. 

“I missed my name day feast,” Nicolò muses. “Saint Giacomo the Greater.”

Yusuf shoots him a confused look. “Your name isn’t Giacomo?”

That leads to a long discussion on the taking of vows and the mistake that Nicolò made in choosing that name. “I meant to take the name of Saint Giacomo the Lesser, but Padre Johannes said that too many priests choose that name. They didn’t want another mouth to fill on that feast day.”

Yusuf laughs. “Why was he so popular a choice?”

“He was Jesus’ younger brother, born of the Virgin Mother and her husband Joseph.” 

“Ah. His family.” 

Something about the way he says it makes Nicolò’s skin prickle. It’s as if Yusuf knows something he does not. “Yes,” he says. 

“We should feast, to make up for missing it.” They have descended again into the city and Yusuf takes him by the hand, pulling him through the throng of merchants and buyers, travelers on their way somewhere and those who call this jumbled place home. At times they must twist their bodies sideways to fit through the crowd, and Nicolò holds tight to Yusuf’s hand. 

They eat dates and tea, bread and honey. Another meat-flavored cloud of spice produces something that scorches Nicolò’s mouth, but then oh, they find someone selling ciambelli, still warm from the pan and sticky with honey. Nicolò inhales two without even thinking, so enamored of their taste that his customary sickness goes completely ignored. 

Halfway through a third, he looks up to find Yusuf watching him fondly. “There, you see. You are cured.”

“As much as I enjoyed the treatment, I think it has as much to do with a good ciambelle.”

“Hm.” Stepping closer, Yusuf ducks his head and captures the pastry with his mouth, biting half of it out of Nicolò’s hand. Nicolò would protest--ciambelli could inspire a man to much violence--except then Yusuf turns his head and captures Nicolò’s finger, sucking the honey from his skin. 

The inside of his mouth is all wet heat and Nicolò feels the pull straight down his arm through his chest to his groin. Yusuf’s eyes are closed, his lashes dark against his cheekbones. They’re tucked in a corner near the market and the crowd has already begun to thin out in the heat of afternoon, but there are still voices all around them and Nicolò quivers like a strummed lute string, his heart beating fast. 

With a pop Yusuf releases his finger and steps back, his gaze hooded. 

They head back to the--well, it isn’t an _inn_ , but Nicolò is not going to think of it as a brothel, dammit. Yusuf apologizes, saying, “We need to stay at least one more night, to be sure that Nadja hid the bodies well enough and no one will come to her looking for us.”

“Is that likely?”

“Not especially.” Yusuf grins. “Never make Nadja your enemy, my friend.”

By the time they reach the building, most all the windows in the street around them have shut. The downstairs of Nadja’s place is blessedly cool and she has left out some sweet wine and something spicy and pickled; they eat then reluctantly traipse upstairs to their room, which is far warmer. 

Yusuf immediately peels off his clothes and lies facedown on the floor. “If you speak one more thing about the heat,” Nicolò warns, “I might kill you again.”

Yusuf groans but does not otherwise move, and after a moment Nicolò strips, too, pausing only to wedge his knife under the doorframe so that it cannot be opened easily before he drapes himself over Yusuf’s back. 

This elicits another groan. “You _will_ kill me,” Yusuf complains, but reaches back to grab Nicolò’s thigh, grinding back against him.

The repertoire of sexual acts that Nicolò has knowledge of expands further. There is a brief moment of confusion--mingled with some intense lust that surprises himself--when Yusuf gets up onto his knees; but Yusuf shakes his head, saying, “Not yet, my love, we need to visit the ḥammām first.”

“You forever want to visit the ḥammām,” Nicolò points out breathlessly. “What--what do you want me to do?”

“Like this, between my thighs.” Yusuf guides him and Nicolò goes, awkwardly walking on his knees with his hips twitching helplessly in the grip of first his lover’s hand, then his legs. The whole of Yusuf’s back is stretched out before him, muscles flexing as he moves, and Nicolò leans low to kiss his ribs, lick the sweat from the channel of his spine, and press his forehead to warm skin.

Once he has finished, he offers the same in return, and Yusuf happily accepts. “We need--cloth,” Nicolò says, still breathless from his own pleasure. Yusuf takes him by the hips and pulls him where he wants Nicolò to be; it is distracting enough that he loses the thread of his thought until his hand slips on his own seed, spilled on the floor. He makes a face. “We need cleaning rags, or--what. Yusuf?”

“Shhh.” Yusuf stretches over his back, pinning Nicolò down with his weight. Some dusty, cobwebbed part of Nicolò’s mind sits up like a dog hearing a whistle. Yusuf isn’t actually that much bigger than him: a couple of inches taller, yes, but they are equal in the shoulders; but Yusuf carries himself with a confidence that makes him seem so much more solid. Feeling that weight now against his back... 

“We’ll visit the ḥammām after the sun goes down,” Yusuf tells him, his hips moving steadily. “I will buy you more clothes, my love, I will buy you all of the clothes you could want. Blue and gray and green to match your beautiful eyes. Do you know how hard it is not to lose myself in your gaze every day?”

Nicolò presses his cheek to the floor, gasping for breath. He knows there is more to this, vaguely, and he wants--he can’t quite make himself think it, but he wants _that_. Wants Yusuf to press him down and enter him. When Yusuf spills with a groan, the hot slick splatters between Nicolò’s thighs, Nicolò thinks, _Yes, yes._

Eventually they do make it to a ḥammām. This one is far more crowded than the last, many voices echoing off the while tiles, many rooms, and many people within. Nicolò finds himself being handed off to an elderly Turkish man who proceeds to scrub off the top layer of his skin. Nicolò has not been touched this much in his life by anyone except for Yusuf, and he resists the urge to either strike the old Turk or climb straight up the smooth, tiled walls in order to escape, especially when his arms are pulled above his head and his feet are kicked apart. The attendant pays him absolutely no mind, brusquely going about his business, even when his business is sticking a hand right between Nicolò’s legs in order to scrub the creases of his groin. 

When he is finally released, every inch of him pink, his hair cut to his shoulders and his beard trimmed, he finds Yusuf waiting for him in the steam room. Yusuf takes one look at his face and bursts out laughing. “Shut up,” Nicolò says, forgetting to speak in Arabic. “You could have _warned_ me, why did you think that was even _necessary_ \--”

“Shhh, shh, easy.” Yusuf pulls him down to sit on the bench--pulls him to practically sit in Yusuf’s lap. The room’s other occupants are foggy shapes in the steam. “Your fur is all ruffled, I see. Well, what is left of it, anyway.”

Nicolò bites his hand. If Yusuf is going to call him an animal, he will oblige. 

Yusuf only laughs harder, so Nicolò gets up and stalks away until he is waylaid by yet another attendant. Somehow Yusuf has obtained a new set of clothes and Nicolò’s tunic is a pale blue-gray, made of soft fabric. He scowls at it but pulls it on. 

By the time they have both left the echoing, noisy rooms of the bathhouse behind, Yusuf has tried to talk to him twice and been rebuffed. When he grabs Nicolò’s wrist, there is a whipcord-tight moment which almost springs to violence; except then Yusuf meets his eye and asks softly, “Did something happen? Did he do something to you?”

His eyes are so gentle. He has trimmed his beard shorter, too, and Nicolò wants to ruffle it with his fingers, even as he also wants to punch Yusuf in the nose. He breathes out, slowly, and feels his proverbial fur flatten. 

“I am not,” he says in Arabic, carefully, “accustomed to--touch, by strangers.”

Yusuf nods, his eyes still on Nicolò’s face, and loosens his grip on Nicolò’s wrist. “I am sorry. I will remember that in the future.”

“You don’t--need to. It is not--I feel fool, now. You bought this tunic for me, and--all of these things...”

A shadow of something like alarm passes over Yusuf’s expression. “That does not mean you owe me anything, Nicolò. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Nicolò replies quickly, because he can see how that possibility frightens Yusuf. He shifts their hands until they are entangled and pulls Yusuf along, speaking as they go. “That does not change that you have been so kind to me, and I have not always been so kind to you. This was a gift and I haven’t--thank you, for. That.”

“You are welcome. I will never, ever give you that gift again.”

“ _Thank you_. When he took out the scissors, I nearly killed him.”

“You look good.”

Yusuf’s gaze on his face is intent. Nicolò has no idea what he looks like: his only mental image of himself has ever been the wavering reflection in water. The old Turk had trimmed away much of his hair and beard, and his face feels...airy, exposed. Between that, the lack of a pack on his shoulders, or any armor on his body, he might as well be walking down the street naked. 

He might as well be, with the way Yusuf is staring at him. “Stop,” Nicolò commands.

“What?” 

“Stop that.” He wants to push Yusuf’s face away, but that would mean letting go of his hand. It’s not as if no one has looked at Nicolò this way before; it is on the tip of his tongue to chide and remind Yusuf that God is watching, but that--no, no, he cannot do that. That would mean reminding _himself_ of that. 

Once that door has opened, though, he cannot shut it. They are sinning together, turning their faces away from whatever purpose God has laid before them in pursuit of bodily pleasure. Nicolò slows to a stop, looking around. It is so difficult to tell where to turn for help; all of the churches here look like the temples of Yusuf’s faith. _At least Yusuf hasn’t prayed all day_ , he thinks, and his stomach twists in a strange new way.

“We need--I need to go to church,” he says. “Will you go to confessional with me?”

Yusuf, who has stopped with him, cocks his head to one side. “I would think that you should do that _after_ we make love.”

The skin of Nicolò’s face and arms flares hot. He’s still gripping Yusuf’s hand--that is not so strange, men hold each other’s hand all the time, but it’s--he can’t string his thoughts together.

Yusuf asks, “Are you really so surprised? I told you we needed to go to the ḥammām first...earlier, you seemed…”

He had seemed. He still is. But.

Yusuf pulls him back into motion. They are not far from Nadja’s brothel; it is by now quite busy, being late in the day, and Nicolò ducks his head, thinking of how they must look--Yusuf taking him upstairs by the hand. The walls are thin enough that he has heard sounds of fornication from other rooms in the night, so surely Nadja and her girls, at least, must know. _God_ knows all, and yet he follows Yusuf into their room and lets him shut the door behind them. 

Through the narrow window, the city has shaken off the sleepy heat of afternoon to howl back the night, its streets buzzing with a different kind of commerce than the respectable trade of morning. There is something electric in the air: a wandering spark waiting to strike. 

Such is the strength of that feeling that when Yusuf reaches for him, Nicolò backs away, fearing a lightning bolt from his very hands. “Wait, wait. Yusuf. What are you going to do?”

“It’s all right, it will not hurt. I have oil--”

“Not that,” Nicolò says, though his skin flashes hot all over again. “Afterwards, what--it’s a sin, Yusuf. What we’ve been doing, what--what we are doing.”

Yusuf presses his mouth together and steps away. He’s right at the door. “All right, yes. It is haram, a sin. Do you want to stop?”

 _No._ Nicolò feels like they’re on a narrow ridge between two cliffs: to fall off either might not prove fatal for someone like them, but it would still hurt. 

Yusuf is watching his face. “Do you think that I have not struggled with this?” he asks quietly. “There are many reasons I should not wish to lie with you. I could list them, if you like, but I do not want to.”

“Then why do it at all, if there are so many?” Nicolò asks, stung. 

“Because it’s you.”

The spark finds ground between them. Nicolò feels it buzzing along his skin, like the prickle of coming back to life. His lungs shiver with it. It’s all he can do to stand in place instead of...he doesn’t even know. He holds himself still by sheer force of will and waits, watching Yusuf’s face. It’s become so familiar and precious to him: his expressive dark eyes, the sharp jaw now so much more visible with the closeness of his shave, the arch of his forehead.

No one else in Nicolò’s life has ever looked at him and seen him, truly wanted him. Loved him. He’d thought only God could love him, and he’d clung to that through the cold emptiness of his childhood--and he’d been right, all along. God brought him Yusuf. 

Who is still standing by the bed, watching him. Nicolò waits but Yusuf does not move; he is the one who knows what to do, but that is the trouble, isn’t it? He worried that Nicolò would do something like this because he felt he owed it to Yusuf, and no, he can’t be allowed to feel that way. He needs to know that he is wanted, too.

So Nicolò is the one to cross the short distance between them, taking Yusuf’s face in his hands and kissing him. It is so much. It is nothing, a quiet press of two mouths in a half-dark room. Yusuf’s hands settle on his sides. Through the tunic it is only pressure, but Nicolò knows better: it is lightning, straight from a cloud in the sky. 

It is still lightning as Yusuf guides him backward to the bed, easing off their tunics as they go. The closer they get to skin--and then it is just that, their fingers on each other’s flesh, and Nicolò would swear he sees sparks. 

It is a kindness to sleep in. Yusuf indulges in it for as long as the world will allow--which means, of late, as long as Nicolò will allow. His lover grows restless far too early in the morning but has already learned to be kind. He wakes but then stills himself with his palms settling on Yusuf’s forearm. 

Smiling, Yusuf dozes pleasantly. 

He wakes some time later when the need to relieve himself grows too strong. The second he sits up, Nicolò does too and precedes him to the chamberpot with the attitude of someone who has been holding in the water for far too long. It makes Yusuf smile wider, though he keeps that part to himself. 

Once they have both relieved themselves, they lie back down again. Yusuf had got up in the night, _after_ , and fetched them both a dampened cloth: he’d wiped down his hand and then his prick, in that order, then folded the cloth over and offered it.

Nicolò, still sprawled out on his belly, had only stared at him, so Yusuf had cleaned him, too, which turned out to be a strangely intimate and erotic experience. He’d never done that before--most of his partners have been...on the receiving end, as was proper for a man of Yusuf’s age and position. He’d been on the other side before too, though he blushes to think of it now and he’s never done it with anyone who might make a nuisance of themselves. He’s never allowed himself to make a habit of it.

Last night, though, he had leaned his weight on Nicolò’s shoulders and felt him _yield_ so sweetly, and he’d wondered what that felt like. There are few people he would trust in that way but who would Nicolò tell? How could he truly hurt Yusuf?

It rouses some belated guilt to think of all the ways that Nicolò is vulnerable in this situation. He is certainly physically capable, as has been proven several times over: Yusuf might have more experience in swordplay but Nicolò’s natural ferocity is inarguably greater. Still, the physical wounds they deal one another never seem to stick, nor any suffering inflicted by another hand or by natural sources, and so these damages must be disregarded. Other than that, Nicolò is penniless and friendless, at least here in Balarm. What lasting damage could he possibly do?

For these reasons and beyond, Yusuf has been careful in bedding him. He wants, in ways he has not felt for years--not since Muhammed--to be a good experience for someone, good enough that even if they do not come to him again, they still remember him fondly and know to expect the same from their other partners. Always, of course, Yusuf is kind and considerate and seeks out the pleasure of those he lies with, even if he has paid for the experience; but there is a profound difference between those fleeting encounters and _this_ , his hands finding the curve of Nicolò’s hips and Nicolò giving Yusuf his own uncertain body.

Yusuf loves him. He knows that, and fears it. That--that is the way that Nicolò can hurt him; but he does not know, and so Yusuf is safe here. 

They doze in the bed again with their limbs entangled, until Yusuf can no longer ignore the sun. He rises and dresses carefully, making sure that every clasp is secured and nothing can be used against him. For his purposes, image is an important tool: he must wear clothes that are clean and well-made, but not so ostentatious to be impious. It was wise of Muhammed, peace be upon him, to lay down such guidelines for them--they are the word of God, surely, but they are also imminently practical. 

Nicolò sits up on the bed to watch him dress. He makes no move to do the same. They have slept without any cover, it still being rather warm. At night they have burrowed close together and at one point Yusuf thinks that Nicolò pulled a cloak over them both, but in daytime they are still heated by the sun that slants in through the narrow, tall window--it is a Normaund window, so perhaps Nadja built the second floor recently. Yusuf cannot tell, his mind has been full of Nicolò recently. 

Nicolò, who sits on the bed with his knees drawn up and his elbows resting on his thighs, watching Yusuf. He watches so much and says so little, but Yusuf would swear that he can feel him--not touch, not precisely, but if he closed his eyes he thinks he would be able to pinpoint where Nicolò exists in a room, or perhaps in the world. 

He supposes they are about to learn if that is true.

“I will be gone for at most six days,” he says.

“I thought you said three.”

“I expect to be gone three days, if all goes well. One day down, one to find my.” How does he explain his life to Nicolò? The people he meets are not friends, very often they are adversaries with whom he wrestles for his livelihood, but they are still very much the only pleasant interactions he can count on wherever he goes. He hesitates to even explain this much. Nicolò is so far removed from his life as a merchant; Yusuf doesn’t _want_ him to understand. And yet he does, desperately, he just doesn’t want to have to explain it all. It seems exhausting, and Nicolò has swiftly become a place of rest. 

He wonders if Nicolò knows that Yusuf is afraid to leave him. He knows that Nicolò is afraid for him to leave--that much is painfully obvious.

“I need to find a man named Abu,” Yusuf finally says as explanation. “He is--I buy grain from him, and then I take it home to sell it to my tribe, to feed them. Then another day back up. So I hope for three, but it may be more. I say six, so that you will not be alarmed.”

“All right,” Nicolò says.

“I love you,” Yusuf says--horribly, horrifically, handing the knife to Nicolò’s hands. He can’t not. 

Of course Nicolò barely even blinks before he says, “I love you, too.” As though it’s nothing. It’s not, Yusuf can tell Nicolò means it with everything in him. That’s who Nicolò _is_. 

Taking Nicolò’s face between his hands, Yusuf kisses him deeply. Nicolò’s hands latch around Yusuf’s wrists like manacles; when they part, it takes him a moment to let go, and there’s an odd desperation in his eyes.

“I’ll come back,” Yusuf protests, though no accusation has been made.

“All right,” Nicolò says.

Yusuf kisses him again, then again. “If I do not leave now, I will not.”

“So don’t. Stay.”

“I have--I can’t. I have responsibilities.” His jdda in al-Qayrawān, the rest of his household. Muhammed, hopefully somewhere in Baghdad. His tribe, waiting for the grain that he needs to buy inland. 

“All right,” Nicolò says. 

“Would you _please_ stop,” Yusuf exclaims.

The very corners of Nicolò’s mouth curl up. It should not be such a comfort, but it is. Yusuf isn’t sure when he learned to watch this man’s face like the changing of the wind, yet here he is. 

“I’m not doing anything,” Nicolò says, but then seems to draw himself up and says, “Six days?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” 

Yusuf can tell it isn’t. Not really.

-o-

The door creaks open and an eye appears in the gap. It blinks, and the gap widens. “Yusuf?”

“No,” Yusuf says, “I’m a ghost. Yes, it’s me, I’ve been looking for you for four days.”

The door opens wider to admit Abu Almeda back into the cloud-spotted world. He is a short man, of Andulisian birth, and far more acquainted with those friendly shores. Frankly, Yusuf is a little surprised to still find him in Sicilia: the change of power must have caught him unawares, and being a cautious creature unaccustomed to the turbulent waters of al-Baḥr, he has gone to ground here to wait out the storm.

Still, he emerges to embrace Yusuf with eagerness. “Yusuf! My good friend! How are you? Tell me you have brought coin for my poor starving family.”

“I have brought coin for the mountain of grain that your poor starving family sits upon, Abu.”

“Oh, I’ve heard tell of your coin. I also hear tell that you have crossed the Caliphate.”

Fuck. And Yusuf just spent two days giving his name and coin to a dozen people who might tell someone where to find him and who he’s looking for. “How so?”

“Oh, that you called the emir a coward after you fled the siege with your sword unbloodied, in the company of a Frank, no less.”

Yusuf frowns, looking into the distance as he considers that information. It did not come from Ibrahim, clearly: if Ibrahim had truly wanted to hurt him in the eyes of his countrymen, he would have let loose the information that Nicolò is Genoese, a familiar enemy. For someone to call him a Frank in the ears of others--that must have been Ali, the goatfucking captain of the Geniah. 

“My sword was not unbloodied in Jerusalem,” he says, still gazing towards the mountain range to the east. The great mountain of fire is not visible from this distance, but Yusuf imagines that he can feel it, inside. “I fought outside the walls of the city, when others hid within. I fought at Ashkelon, while others slept, and I fought at Ashkelon while others _fled_.”

“And yet you live,” Abu counters.

“That does not change the fact that _I fought_ ,” Yusuf snarls. “You may go and ask of the dead their numbers, but do not _dare_ fucking question how much I gave. I was in Jerusalem. I did not need to be there; I did not swear my sword to the Caliphate. I fought because people were dying and wanted for protection, and I fought in Ashkelon in the hope that those same people might still be alive, and my sword could save them. I gave _all that I fucking had_ , and I lived only by the mercy of God Himself.”

His breath leaves him and he looks again at the mountains to steady himself. 

In his mind, he is back in Jerusalem, inside of the gates. He and a few others had stood there, demanding to be let out; it meant their deaths, as the guardsmen had told them repeatedly, but they had commanded it all the same. If they could reach the siege machines from the outside, they could distract the Franks scaling the city walls long enough for those atop the walls to regain their breath. That was the argument they gave.

They demanded, again and again. When finally, the guardsmen had acceded, there had been a long, terrible moment of waiting, so they had embraced one another and whispered, _Allahu akbar_ in each other’s ears. Yusuf hadn’t even known the other men--a few guardsmen, a few Egyptian cavalry without their mounts, a pair of Jews who had whispered a phrase in their own language. They had gripped each other tight as they waited for the gates to open. 

He sucks in a long, slow breath, and releases it. He is in Sicilia. The air is warm and too humid. Every man who ran out of the gates with him that day is dead.

After a moment, Abu says, “Forgive me. I have known you long and I know what kind of man you are.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Because in case you haven’t noticed, the world’s gone mad. The strength of the Caliphate is fading and everywhere it is Franks, Normaunds, Byzantines...pah, I want to be home. The taifas squabble but at least they know when to band together. Come on, Alma will kill me if I don’t offer you dinner.”

Abu leads him through verdant fields. There are workers here who look perilously familiar to Yusuf; every time a veil turns to reveal a face, he expects it to be that of his little sister Farah, who married a mid-level government official in Ṭarābulus. There is so much, here, that he has not thought of--deliberately, he admits. As a merchant, Yusuf is well-accustomed to dividing his life into careful pieces. All travelers of the world do so: everywhere he goes, he encounters whole worlds and stories that he must then leave behind. While he is in them he cannot help but become involved; to not do so seems a pointless waste of the life God has given him. Yet when the time comes to load his goods back on board the ship, he lays down his emotional connection to the conflicts of whatever land in which he found himself, and he travels to the next. It is not that he feels their pain and joy any less; but if he carried them all with him, he would sink. 

Others in his profession take this much further, making whole families for themselves in different places, and not in the pious way of the Prophet Muhammed, praise be upon him, who took in war widows and gave them a place in the community again. No, they marry women in various places who know nothing of one another, who see their husband perhaps one month of the year, and fend for themselves the rest of the time. 

Yusuf does not go that far, by any means, but he does hold the world around him at a certain distance regardless of where he is. This, though...this is so close to home. He finds himself looking to the southwest as they pass over a hillside. There is the sea, of course, but almost visible on the horizon is his homeland, and his bones ache.

Abu’s extremely pregnant wife, Alma, greets him with much to-do and no small amount of flirting. So far as he has ever been able to tell, she means nothing by it and Abu takes no visible umbrage, so Yusuf flirts back, praising her cooking as mana from heaven and her eyes like the stars above. Alma grins, delighted, and gives him an extra cookie before they sit down to haggle. If he had expected the flirting might give him any kind of edge in this arena, Yusuf would have been quickly disappointed: Alma’s grasp on Arabic is limited but she bargains like the most ruthless pirate while Abu drinks his strange, sweet nut-milk and interjects occasionally. 

A tumble of squabbling children provides a brief intermission while Alma lays waste to all with a wooden spoon. 

“You are a lioness, lithe in form and deadly in battle,” Yusuf tells her.

She grins again. She’s missing two teeth, and yet it still manages to be the sweetest smile he’s ever seen. She names a price.

“You are as relentless and merciless as the winter rain,” Yusuf says, but what’s he going to do? Buy from someone else? He can tell when he’s been had by a better negotiator. He’ll take the price and he’ll thank her for it. 

They put him up for the night. Fortunately, Alma restricts any flirting to the negotiation table and Yusuf is afforded a pleasant night of rest in their bedroom, while they sleep in the bed of their house slave, who sleeps...elsewhere. Yusuf doesn't ask. 

He dreams of Nicolò. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it does. They dreamt of each other after parting in Jerusalem and have since confirmed with one another that those dreams showed the true actions of the other, yet since then they’ve slept at each other’s side every night. Whatever has caused this, it brings them together even over distance.

In the dream, Nicolò is praying. Yusuf has seen him at it before, of course: before bed, in the morning, a quick prayer of thanks before each meal, and sometimes at seemingly-random moments, too, when facing a particular challenge, as if some aspect of God hearkens to every part of his day. At the time Yusuf had taken some comfort in it. Their god was the same God, after all, why should he not find solace in Nicolò’s prayers? 

Nothing about this prayer comforts him. Nicolò twists his hands together until the string of his prayer necklace makes his fingers pale and bloodless. He paces about the room that Yusuf knows. When he leaves it the dream becomes more fragmented, just flashes of different locations, streets, towers, the sky and the ground, the people around him. He feels Nicolò’s discomfort with a crowd in a way he has never understood before. It is an actual physical agony. 

Yusuf wakes disoriented and shaky, like he hasn’t eaten in days. 

In the morning, Abu launches into motion, gathering that mountain of grain into parcels that Yusuf must count and examine for rot, mold, and vermin. Half of the coin he earned in al-Quds he has brought with him inland, but another half awaits in a lockbox he left in Balarm--a caution in case Abu tries to rob him. He has slept in the man’s bed, but only with his shimshar in reach, and he examines each parcel with care, turning several away that have been too loosely bundled. Perhaps he should have brought Nicolò after all, as hired muscle...but then the rumors would truly fly. 

He left money with Nicolò. Why has he not eaten? What troubles him so? Even as Yusuf tries to keep his thoughts from straying, a tight ball of misery has wound around his heart. When they break for the midday prayers, he struggles to make space for God in his mind, such is his distress.

“Why the sour face?” Abu asks. “We’re about to be rich men! Well, richer men. Why, if you hadn’t come along in another week I would have gone down to Kirkent and found a Christian to sell to. Pah!” He spits on the ground again, a truly disgusting habit. Yusuf has seen Christian men do it, but refrains from pointing this out to Abu while he is still surrounded by Abu’s workers and the two lazy men he calls guards. 

Instead Yusuf asks, “What news do you have from al-Mahdīyah?” 

They chat for some time about mutual acquaintances and the grain market in the Maghreb. Apparently it has been a light year: the destruction of half the Caliphate fleet nearly two decades ago created opportunity for pirates to strike at merchant vessels all along the coast, and with the remainder of the Caliphate forces focused on the battle for al-Quds, they have paid little attention to their lands to the West, leaving many to fend for themselves. 

“You may want to go to the Greeks for your security,” Abu advises. “They are liars and whoreson thieves, but at least they’re reasonable. The Franks and Normaunds would just as soon cut your throat, even if it means losing a profit themselves. There is no sense to them!”

“I will take that under advisement.” Yusuf feels doubly glad that he left Nicolò behind. His heart throbs in his chest and he rubs at his sternum absently. 

Distantly across the fields, someone screams. Yusuf twitches, his hand falling to the hilt of his shimshar.

“Ach, not another boar.” Abu whistles for the guards then casts Yusuf a sideways glance. “Are you going to judge me if I serve pork tonight?”

“Only if you make me eat it.”

It isn’t a boar. While he, Abu, and the two guards are moving in that direction, the screaming gets louder there’s what Yusuf immediately recognizes as the sound of a sword striking flesh. The two guards must recognize it, too, because they join Yusuf in a dead run. 

Up ahead is one of the outlying huts where they bundle hay. As they draw near, a woman stumbles backward around the edge of the hut, her arms raised. Yusuf puts on a burst of speed as a man appears in front of her, shortsword in hand; he’s too late. The man stabs the woman first in her arms, knocking them to the side, then in her chest. Her scream unravels, turns breathless as she falls. The man grimaces, grabbing the side of her head and tossing her limp body against the side of the hut. 

He looks up and his eyes widen. Then Yusuf is on him.

He only has the one shimshar--he left the other with Nicolò for protection--and the man has friends, more than Yusuf can count while focusing on the movement of his sword. It’s immediately clear to him that these are not trained soldiers, nor very experienced fighters: they have no armor and their weapons are in a variety of conditions, some showing signs of rust and disrepair.

From somewhere nearby there is a sharp, high-pitched sound.

That sound travels through Yusuf. He could never forget it: a Genoese crossbow. Suddenly, he is back in al-Quds, gasping back to life and groping at his own belly, clawing a bolt out of himself. He is halfway across the field, driven by wild rage and the half-dazed thought that he must be dying, but if he can reach the Genoese in time he can at least take the whoreson down with him--

The second bolt had nearly passed straight through him. 

Something flashes in his vision and Yusuf ducks on pure instinct, dodging the shortsword aimed at his throat. It’s a wide slash and he stabs into the man’s armpit, turning sideways on the withdrawal and spinning to cut across his spine and shove him to the ground. One of Abu’s guards is on the ground with a crossbow bolt in his throat; Yusuf follows the angle of the bolt to find the bowman’s position on the edge of the fighting. He’s a dark-haired man, bent over his bow and cranking his arms to span it for another bolt. 

Getting to the bowman means going through one of his friends. Abu and his other guard are here now, and two of the fieldworkers are still alive, though Yusuf glimpses at least three bodies on the ground. Yusuf parries the stab of a spear, grabs the haft, and drives it backwards into its owner’s body, then splits the man’s face open on a backwards slice. 

The bowman sets the bolt in place and lifts it. Yusuf hefts the spear, spinning it so that the metal tip points in the right direction. He has no experience with spears. Dowaud, the elderly Hebrew swordmaster whom Yusuf’s father hired, taught him how to throw the discus, but never the spear. 

The bowman aims at Abu, who freezes. Yusuf throws.

The spear, apparently, is not too different from the discus, because the point embeds itself in the bowman’s chest. His bolt goes wild, straight into Yusuf’s thigh. 

He howls, hopping on one leg, but the second guard is dead and another attacker is lunging at him, clumsily swinging a longsword. He scores a hit, a deep slice across Yusuf’s abdomen that nearly doubles him over in agony, but Yusuf manages to keep his feet and sweeps his shimshar up to catch the man under the chin. Pivoting on his good leg, he knocks the sword away and doubles back to run the man through. The swordsman clutches at him, clawing Yusuf’s face and grabbing at his beard; he shoves the man’s wrist away, pulling out the saif only to plunge it back in. The swordsman dies with a gurgle and slumps to the ground.

One attacker remains, but he turns tail and runs when he watches the last of his brethren fall. All told, almost a dozen bodies lie in the sun. Yusuf sucks in a breath, wiping at the stinging cuts that the swordsman’s fingernails scored in his cheeks. 

“Fuck me,” Abu pants. “Yusuf, you’re--”

“I’m all right,” Yusuf says. He angles his body away from Abu and shoves whatever is bulging out of his gut back in. It is slick and warm. The flesh almost closes around his hand as it heals, sucking at his fingertips. Fuck, that hurts. Pain flies all around his abdomen like razor butterflies--his intestines, he realizes, thinking of the medical manuscripts that he read in his tutelage. That was part of his _intestines_ that he just shoved back into his own body, and he swallows hard so as not to vomit. “It isn’t my blood,” he adds, a barefaced lie.

Fortunately Abu is preoccupied with his own wounds, some minor scrapes and a shallow cut across his knuckles where an enemy’s knife caught him. “Bismillah,” he murmurs shakily. “You--Yusuf, you saved my life.”

“Think nothing of it,” Yusuf says. One of their attackers is still alive, thrashing in the tall grass. Yusuf should go over to him, give him a clean death, but he doesn’t want to see what he’s done to the man to make him cry out in such pain. After a few minutes, the man’s moans trail off and his movements still. 

By then Abu has collected himself and lifted his--a hoe, he’s got a hoe gripped in his hands. Well. He’s braver than Yusuf ever gave him credit for. “Are there any more?”

“How should I know?” Yusuf still has his shimshar drawn, and he swings it a little to give his wrist a break. Blood droplets fall from its edge onto the trodden grass around them. He’s shaking with adrenaline, and has to lock his knees to stay upright. They wait, but no one else comes running out of the fields to attack them. Eventually Abu turns to his staff, calling out to the overseer and gathering people together to assess injuries and tend to the dead. Yusuf waits a bit longer then approaches the nearest attacker, turning him over with a foot. The man had been run through and vomited as he died; his sightless eyes stare up at Yusuf, who flinches and looks away. 

Around the man’s neck is a necklace. Yusuf kneels with an effort--there’s still a bolt embedded in his thigh, hidden by the loose folds of his tunic and trousers--and gropes for the leather thong, his fingers slipping in blood. It’s a rough wooden cross. 

Gritting his teeth, he drops the necklace. The man is pale-skinned, and his unseeing eyes are blue-green. He might have been handsome, once, but now he’s covered in blood and vomit. 

Yusuf’s thigh begins to ache in a different way and he grinds his molars together to keep from screaming. The bolt is moving outward from his flesh, as if pushed by something from inside. When enough has emerged to provide a handhold, he grips the wood and yanks it out. A gout of blood follows, enough that he fears he might die again; but he stays upright and living, and after a moment he staggers to his feet and goes to help the injured.

-o-

All told, four of the fieldworkers were killed, and another perishes of his injuries before the sun sets. Yusuf had hoped to be back on his way north by now but he cannot leave, not when there are wounded to tend to and comfort, and Abu is unguarded. 

“Last week I had dealings with a Turk,” Abu reports grimly. “He asked many questions about my operations and I let slip that I kept a lockbox in that location. Bastard must have hired those bandits to steal it. A blessing that you were here,” he adds to Yusuf.

They are seated outside of Abu’s house. Alma is inside with the wives of the two guardsmen; even from here, they can hear the weeping. “What will happen to them?” Yusuf asks, meaning the grieving women.

Abu sighs. “I suppose I’ll marry them.” When Yusuf looks surprised, he shrugs. “I’m not about to turn them out. Their men died to protect my life and my family.”

“Well, fuck. And here I was going to ask for a hero’s discount. No, I’ll pay you full price. Consider it your dowry.”

Abu laughs shakily and they actually lean against each other’s shoulders. “I will come with you to al-Mahdīyah, my friend,” Abu vows. “Once we reach Balarm I’ll hire more guards and bring half of them with us, then send the other half here in case that bastard Turk tries again. I’ll see your grain, and you, safely to your homeland, Yusuf.”

Yusuf isn’t about to turn down the offer. If he never has to draw his shimshar again, it will be too soon: he keeps replaying the fight in his mind, but it bleeds--literally--into others. Ashkelon, al-Quds--even the assassins he killed in al-Qāhirah. They flow together in a river of red that seems to follow him. 

“Yusuf al-Kaysani,” Abu muses. “Hah! No wise man would risk his own life for the likes of me. No, I name you al-Tayyib, the generous.”

Or the gentle. Despite everything, Yusuf finds himself smiling. “Next you’ll be asking me to marry you.”

Abu scoffs but at dinner offers him the best cut of meat. Yusuf can’t bring himself to eat much: it makes him think of the shredded flesh of the men who he killed today, bulging outward from their cut-open skin. He feels tender and untethered, jumping at every sound; he aches to curl in bed with someone, with Nicolò, and be close to another body without the threat of pain between them. 

The next morning passes in a blur. They bury the fallen, murmuring prayers as they do so; they bury the attackers, too, though it’s better than what those bandits deserve. Once that task has finished Abu sets his workers to their task with renewed fervor, even joining them to help bundle the parcels of grain. They’re still at it by the time the first of their convoy sets out on their winding path towards Balarm, but Abu waves Yusuf towards his rented horse. “Go, go, protect our investment. Besides, I can tell you’re itching to get back to whoever you left in Balarm. I’ll meet you at the port.”

How Abu guesses that sensitive information, Yusuf doesn’t know. He’s usually better at hiding when he’s taken a new lover: the women because it would dishonor them and the men because, well, it wouldn’t be as morally objectionable if Yusuf still had a wife, but Fatima has been dead for eight years and he is a grown man, old enough to be pushing the edge of propriety. He needs to be more careful. 

That reminder to himself withers the closer they get to Balarm. The convoy moves slowly, consisting of goat-drawn carts and servants on foot carrying the bags of grain on their heads; they would move faster if several of the stronger fieldworkers hadn’t been deputized as guards. They circle the caravan nervously, slowing their progress as they wind through the mountains. 

By mid-afternoon they are in sight of the city, and Yusuf gives up any pretense as he spurs his horse towards the city gates. If nothing else, he is desperately in need of a bath: he cleansed himself as best he could at Abu’s, but he imagines he can still smell blood on his skin and in his hair. He needs new clothes: the slash to his gut left his thobe torn and the crossbow bolt in his leg punched a hole in his trousers. Wallah, at this rate he will need an entire new wardrobe every week.

If he is honest with himself--and he tries to be, even when it’s all too easy to ignore the things he doesn’t want to contemplate--then he has to admit that neither clothes nor baths has anything to do with his reasons for hurrying through the interaction at the stables, not bothering to make his usual conversation with the hostler. It takes effort to be who he needs to be: the charming merchant who leaves everyone smiling faintly. Even fucking Ali aboard the Geniah had liked their antagonistic interactions because Yusuf was quick with a joke. It takes effort and with the smell of blood on him right now he just--wants to be with someone who doesn’t require that kind of energy. 

He wants Nicolò.

The irony doesn’t escape him. Their first greeting was a murder, their first gift to one another a death. Nicolò shot him through with crossbow bolts, slashed his throat, and smashed his face in with a rock. How such a person could ever be considered a sanctuary to Yusuf, objectively, feels insane, but the whole of this experience feels insane, and...there is a kind of purity to everything that Nicolò does, even his violence. He is exactly who he is, without the pretense or illusion that clouds the rest of Yusuf’s life. Yusuf does not think himself a dishonest man, but nor does he ever share himself with anyone in whole the way he has done with Nicolò.

Such thoughts preoccupy him as he makes his way across town. It is afternoon and he should be in prayer; he prayed this morning with Abu and his family, of course, and the caravan paused for Dhuhr on the journey, but he has no intention of rousing himself for Maghrib or ‘Isha, not if the evening goes as he thinks, hopes it will. It’s been five days since he last saw Nicolò and his dreams have grown increasingly fragmented. Even the mysterious women seem to be at odds, arguing with one another while Yusuf awkwardly watches, unable to look away from their spat. They are in al-Qāhirah now; Nicolò was right, they must be tracking him and Yusuf.

A thread of anxiety winds about Yusuf’s mind, slowing his footsteps. He has been trying not to think about what will happen next. He must go home, to al-Mahdīyah and then to al-Qayrawān. This is non-negotiable: people await him there who depend on his return. His ydda, Hakim, his tribe. His sister Farah has married but a lapse in grain for the region will affect her, as well. And somewhere in Baghdad: Muhammed, his young love, who entrusted him with a letter to--to his sister, to Khalida. 

How Nicolò fits into any part of that life...no. He doesn’t. A male lover would not necessarily be looked down upon, not if Yusuf re-married promptly enough upon his return--as he should have the last time he was home--but a Genoese man? No, he cannot come with Yusuf any further. He will have to stay behind in Sicilia.

The realization of this spurs his feet to greater speeds, until he reaches the door of Nadja’s café. He needs--he has to see Nicolò, knowing that they have just days left, he has to tell Nicolò that he will come back. For surely Nicolò has--yes, Wallah, of course he’s thought of this. That is why Yusuf’s dreams have been so painful. Nicolò has known this was coming, and Yusuf finds himself stammering through a greeting to Nadja, who makes a face at him and gestures over his shoulder.

Yusuf turns and there he is. Nicolò saw him first and seems to have frozen in that exact position, staring across the room. Wallah, that Yusuf ever thought this man cold and reserved. Everything he feels is in his face, just--smaller, more delicate, like he’s never had anyone with whom he could share his thoughts and feelings, and so he’s uncertain how to do so. From what little he’s told Yusuf of his life, that might very well be the case. 

God only knows what’s on _Yusuf_ ’s face right now. He politely excuses himself from Nadja and walks towards the stairwell--but Nicolò is heading for the outer door, so Yusuf checks himself. It’s midafternoon, they don’t have to--he’s acting like an impious youth with his brain centered entirely on his cock. He shakes himself and hurries after Nicolò.

A greeting is on his lips as he emerges from the stuffy interior, but it dies there. Nicolò is waiting for him outside and his expression has turned somewhat wild, a look that Yusuf associates with one of them dying. 

“You said three days,” Nicolò says. “Six, at the most.”

“I know. We were attacked--it doesn’t matter. Forgive me, I came back as soon as I could.”

The wild look doesn’t leave Nicolò’s face. He reaches out then stops and turns, stomping around the edge of the building into the narrow alley between it and the next building. By now Yusuf has caught on and follows eagerly, letting himself be seized the moment he turns the corner. His back hits the side of the building and then Nicolò is on him, his mouth open and demanding against Yusuf’s. 

They twist and turn, Nicolò doing his best to pin Yusuf in place and biting his lip in retaliation when Yusuf can’t help but laugh in delight and relief. Yusuf shudders as their bodies meet. They press together from thighs to shoulders and a wave of physical sensation floods over Yusuf, like wrapping himself in a warm blanket after days of cold. For the first time all day he smells something other than blood, even if it’s slightly-sweaty Genoese; Yusuf never thought that he’d ever find such a thing endearing, let alone arousing. He slides his hands up Nicolò’s back to cradle the back of his neck, his thumb rubbing under Nicolò’s ear. Nicolò moans, his body melting against Yusuf’s as if he, too, feels the relief of some invisible need that can only be satisfied by Yusuf’s hands, Yusuf’s touch, Yusuf. It is as much a relief to feel that response mirrored back as it is to see Nicolò at all. They might both have gone mad, but they have gone mad together.

“‘I die of love for you,’” Yusuf mumbles into Nicolò’s mouth when they separate to breathe. He flushes hot to reveal so much, but it feels good. 

“You can’t die,” Nicolò tells him, and it isn’t clear whether he means it as a reminder or a command. 

Yusuf laughs softly, rocking them back and forth in place very slightly just to feel Nicolò trust him with his weight. When Nicolò starts to lean back in, Yusuf retreats just to tease, and is immediately grabbed all over again, to his utmost delight. Nicolò is not a large man, but neither is he small, and Yusuf can attest firsthand to his physical strength as Yusuf’s back is pressed into the stone wall behind him. What small part of his brain is still capable of thought recalls his abashed curiosity from a week ago, when he’d wondered if he might let Nicolò have him. Now he doesn’t think; he knows. He wants Nicolò in every way, to take everything from him and give him everything. 

Such is his passion that he might have allowed Nicolò to take him right in that fucking alley, except then Nicolò himself detaches piece by piece, gasping, “Stop, stop, Yusuf. We have to stop.”

“Right.” Yusuf gasps himself free from the ocean of his desire. He groans, sliding away along the wall while Nicolò staggers in the opposite direction. They both double over, breathing heavily. Nicolò shoves the heel of one hand into his groin and Yusuf can’t help but laugh; when that causes Nicolò to flush and twist away from him, though, he flails out a hand to rest on Nicolò’s shoulder. “Apologies. It’s okay, I’m--me, too.”

Nicolò follows the pull of Yusuf’s hand on his shoulder until their eyes meet. Yusuf watches as Nicolò’s gaze travels down and back his body, lingering on the evidence of Yusuf’s desire for him. Wallah. They truly need to stop, unless they straggle their way back inside Nadja’s place to finish this off. Yusuf looks away first, trying to think of--well, there’s still the smell of blood in his hair. Abu and the wail of his new wives. A trail of blood and split skin that has followed Yusuf from al-Quds to here.

He lets his head fall back against the stone behind him. He has done so much wrong, here. He might not have made any promises to Nicolò aloud, but he has done things with his body, with his words, that deserve that kind of consideration. He loves Nicolò. He had told him that. He cannot be one of those men who has a wife in every port, but what else is he to do, here?

“Listen to me,” Nicolò says before Yusuf can speak. He looks away down the narrow pathway between the buildings; he seems to struggle with something...his prick from the look of it, and oh, Yusuf wants that, wants Nicolò to use what Yusuf has taught him. “While you were gone, I met a priest. I told him what has happened to us, and he--he knows what to do, we need to meet with him. You need to come with me to--to see him.”

The words take a minute to penetrate Yusuf’s lust-addled brain, which is preoccupied with thoughts of a different kind of penetration. “You...wait, you told someone about us? About what has we are?”

“Yes. I needed to. I had to ask someone what to do. Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t tell him your name. I am not a fool, no matter what you might think.”

“Okay. All right.” Yusuf is still trying desperately to drag his brain up the length of his body to where it belongs. “I didn’t think you were a fool. Who did you ask?”

“The Padre di Magione. He has known others who came back to life. He...Yusuf, you need to come with me to the church. Please. They will have answers for you there.”

Well, all the talk of temples and priests has successfully killed Yusuf’s arousal. “All right,” he says cautiously. He still isn’t of the opinion that Christian priests might have a better understanding of what has happened to Nicolò and Yusuf than anyone else--except maybe for the two women in their dreams--but if they do he’s willing to listen. If Nicolò had proposed traveling to a heathen temple for answers, he might have been more hesitant; but this is still a temple to God, albeit one that might not particularly welcome Yusuf’s presence.

So when Nicolò straightens and holds out his hand, Yusuf takes it without hesitation or a second thought. He’s grateful; there’s so much that he needs to explain, to make sure that Nicolò understands.

He takes a few minutes to gather his thoughts, letting Nicolò guide him through the streets. Then he says, “I will need to go away, for some time. Several months.”

Nicolò slows. He does not look at Yusuf, as he is still guiding their way through the streets. “What do you mean?” he asks. 

“I need to go south, to al-Mahdīyah, for at least half a year. When I went inland, I secured an amount of grain that is now moving to the port, where I will take it south to my homeland and sell it there. Once that is done, I can--I will be free to return. If you are still here, I can come back and find you. Why do you look at me like that? I will not leave you.”

Nicolò has stopped completely in the middle of the street in favor of staring at Yusuf. Merchants flow around them, shooting dirty looks; Yusuf doesn’t have it in himself to soothe their irritation. 

“I won’t leave you,” he insists, despite insisting that he will, that he must. 

“You think,” Nicolò says, “that you...that you can just walk away from this?”

“ _No_ , of course not, that is what I am telling you. I will come back--”

“Not _me_ ,” Nicolò interrupts. “It isn’t--I don’t matter.”

“Of course you do. How can you think you do not?” Yusuf steps closer, wanting to press his hand against the side of Nicolò’s face. “You matter to me, greatly. I want you...if you are willing, I want you to stay here, or at least be somewhere that I can find you. I will give you money. You cannot come with me, Nicolò, but I will come back. I swear it.”

“No, I. I’m not what matters. God is. Don’t you see it?”

He does. God is in all things, in the grass, the sand, and the beauty and joy of life. Yusuf sees God in the color of Nicolò’s eyes. To hear Nicolò say that he doesn’t matter drives Yusuf mad and makes him reach out.

Nicolò flinches, pulling back. Yusuf frowns, cocking his head in question, but Nicolò averts his eyes. “Come on,” he says, then turns and tugs Yusuf along.

The church to which he leads Yusuf is not a church. It is a mosque that has had crucifixes nailed to the walls. They are crude wooden carvings of their prophet’s dead body, twisted and deformed in his dying moments; against the delicate floral tiles behind them, the carvings look grotesque. Parts of the mosaic covering the interior arches have been smashed even where there aren’t crucifixes nailed into place, and Yusuf can’t tell if that was the result of fighting or simple, deliberate defacement. 

Why the Christians would feel the need to do that escapes Yusuf’s understanding. Maybe they thought the tiles were in some way tied to worship--or maybe they saw the beauty of this place and simply wanted to destroy it.

“Yusuf?” Nicolò’s voice breaks into his thoughts. He is a few paces in front of Yusuf, looking back at him. Benches have been dragged into the mosque and arranged to face in one direction. They are empty at this time of day, but a few Christian priests move around the interior, cleaning and rearranging the building to suit their purposes. 

Yusuf chews at the inside of his lip. “Did you come to pray in this place while I was gone?”

“Yes. Il Padre di Magione brought with him one of the holy relics, the finger of San Pietro. He has seen it bring a man back to life.”

“I felt you here. Nicolò--this place is not kind for you.” It is not kind for either of them. Yusuf is not a holy man, nor even particularly pious; but everything about what has been done to this place feels like sand against his skin. 

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters.” Stepping closer, Yusuf reaches out, intending to take Nicolò by the hand again and lead him away from here. He has seen these broken tiles before in dreams, has felt Nicolò’s anguish as he knelt on the floor. He has been hurting himself here, and at the time Yusuf had foolishly thought that Nicolò missed him that much. 

His sense of dread only grows when Nicolò steps back from him, his eyes darting to the priests. So he must have confessed their haram. Well, Yusuf hopes that whoever he told will keep their mouth shut. It pains him to think of what they have shared with one another as something evil that Nicolò has had to shed. 

Pain turns to defensiveness. “Do you really think someone’s finger brought us back to life?”

Nicolò’s expression tightens. “No. I think God did it, for a purpose.”

“And what purpose might that be?”

“I came here to ask that question. The padre told me--I knew, I already knew, I did.” Nicolò’s eyes drop briefly to the ground, like a child standing in front of an angry father, before his shoulders straighten. Yusuf could snap Nicolò’s muscles like uncooked noodles, they look so brittle. “I must beg your forgiveness, Yusuf. I have done wrong by you.”

“What?” Yusuf asks, thrown. Two of the priests have noticed their presence and are making their way over. One of them frowns as his gaze lands on Nicolò, then transfers his stare to Yusuf. 

“I should have been guiding you,” Nicolò tells him. His voice has become strangely even, the way it does whenever he prays. It is practiced--something he has learned to say and repeated many times. “God has called us both to Him and I heard, but instead of answering I gave into my own selfish desires. For you, it was understandable, but on my part the sin is more grievous, not only in what I did with you but in failing to answer God’s command and helping you to hear it, as well. I can only ask for your forgiveness.”

Yusuf stares. The two priests have drawn near, but he cannot help asking, “What do you mean, it was more understandable for me?”

Any response Nicolò might have made is preempted by the older of the two priests, the one whose gaze is too knowing. He is dark-skinned, darker than Yusuf; he looks perhaps like a Gurage tribesman, though what he is doing here wearing Christian robes, Yusuf cannot imagine. 

The priest speaks to Nicolò in Latin, while eyeing Yusuf, who speaks enough of that tongue to know that he is being identified as _the Saracen_. “This is Padre Matteo di Magione,” Nicolò says in Greek. “Please, just listen to him, Yusuf. For me.”

 _For him_? For him, Yusuf would seize Nicolò, throw him over his shoulder, and run from this place; but maybe the priest can sense his thoughts, because he takes Nicolò firmly by the shoulder and leads him down through the pews. Gritting his teeth, Yusuf follows, though he lets his eyes roam over the rest of the temple as he does so. No one here appears armed. One of his shimshars is presumably still in their room at Nadja’s, but the other hangs at his waist, still stinking of blood. His stomach turns. 

And to think that he had imagined a bath, a bed to rest in, and a body to share, after the journey he’s had. 

The priest leads Nicolò towards the place where all of the pews face. An altar stands there, draped in fine cloth; this, at least, looks like something other than simple defacement, draped with clean cloth and adorned with candles and bowls. Their holy book is open, there, and despite everything Yusuf twitches with interest. He has heard snatches of prayer from Nicolò and other Christians that sometimes flow into something lovely and lyrical that Yusuf could truly believe came from God. 

His attention is regained when the priest leaves Nicolò standing near the end of the columns of pews and approaches the altar. He bows once with his back to them then makes the sign of the cross in the air. It gives Yusuf the opportunity to study him a little closer, and what he finds does not impress him. The neck of the man’s robes is stained from his skin, and if Yusuf breathes deep through his nose, the smell of body odor is noticeable even from several paces away. Yusuf cannot help but sneer. From what he understands, the Christians believe that every priest is a representative of God--so why the fuck would God choose _this_ man?

“Nicolò,” he murmurs, “you said he had answers for us.”

“Shh,” Nicolò says. His eyes are trained on the priest. There is something fearful in his expression, but resigned, too. 

The priest turns to his left, where there is a tub filled with water. “Oh, is he going to wash? In front of us?” That would be nice, if somewhat immodest--but no, the priest gesticulates again over the water then turns to face them.

The priest speaks. Nicolò translates, “In God and with God and through God are all things. As Christ has died and been resurrected, so have you, to serve His glorious purpose. It is through this death and resurrection that all our sins are forgiven and our souls purified--”

“Nicolò,” Yusuf interrupts. Both Nicolò and the priest cut off. Yusuf looks at Nicolò, the priest, then the water. Something terrible begins to take shape in his mind, connected to his limited understanding of Christian practices. He thinks of the times Nicolò has asked him to pray with him, to come to church with him. He had thought it a kind offer to share in something that was deeply important to Nicolò but now--

The priest starts to say something in Latin--no, he sings it, the tone rhythmically rising and falling. He faces Yusuf and makes the sign of the cross in the air. 

A dart of something like ice passing straight through Yusuf’s heart, as though flung by the priest’s upraised hand. He is two paces away before he can even think, and his hand rests on the shimshar hung at his waist. 

He looks at Nicolò, who has twisted around to look at Yusuf. His eyes are wide; he looks frightened. “Yusuf, what are you--”

“Why did you bring me here?” Yusuf asks. His voice rings against the stones of the mosque. The _mosque_. 

Whatever Nicolò starts to say gets cut off by the priest, who says something loudly. He gestures to the floor in front of him with a rigid, imperious finger. He wants Yusuf to kneel before him, as if he is God Himself and not a stinking wretch in a stolen temple. 

Sneering, Yusuf turns on his heel and strides away. 

Footsteps ring out behind him. Nicolò seizes him by both shoulders, as if he means to bodily drag Yusuf back. 

Wrenching free, Yusuf spins on him, but draws up short. If he strikes a Christian man, here, he will be killed. It may not last, but he can imagine the aftermath. The priests would go to the Normaunds and complain about rabid Saracens attacking their unarmed flock in their stolen temple; the Normaunds would increase patrols in this area; a man who looks like him but is entirely innocent would get dragged to his death or imprisonment. 

He turns and runs. 

Again, footsteps follow. It is mid-afternoon, when the city rests through the hottest part of the day, but even now its streets are not empty; heads turn as they race past, but no one dares to help someone being chased by a Christian. 

“Yusuf!” Nicolò shouts. “Stop!” 

He does not. At first Yusuf runs blindly towards the Al-Khalesa quarter, thinking to find help there, but no, he dares not bring Normaund guards after him, not with so many Arabs and Jews and non-Christians in that part of town. His heart beats faster than the pace of his feet warrants. His mind remembers Abu’s farm...al-Quds. He is outside al-Quds, running to his death and hoping that he can buy a minute, a few seconds, for the men atop the walls. 

Something hits his back and he goes to the ground, scraping his knees, his hands. He rolls automatically, his training, his swordmaster Dowaud telling him, get your feet back under you. He stands.

They are in one of the long, winding pathways between the upper part of Balarm and the gardens below, between the inner city and the port. The full beauty of greenery is below them, full of _pavone_. He can hear their calls even now. 

“What are you doing?” Nicolò asks. He’s still on his knees on the ground. He did not roll with the fall. 

“What are you doing?” Yusuf retorts. Widen your stance. Be ready for an attack. 

Nicolò climbs to his feet. His hands are at his sides. His eyes are--they are blue, and green, and grey. He is so beautiful. Yusuf remembers Nicolò on his back, his legs wrapped around Yusuf’s waist, and his eyes so wide. Wallah, less than an hour ago he was so in love with this man, he would have given Nicolò anything he asked for.

But that was before he asked for _this_.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says. “We need to go back to the church.”

“Why?”

“Because! You need to be baptized--you need to be confessed, you--”

“ _Why?_ ”

“Because you need to convert!”

It hurts to hear. He has known. He knew the moment he saw the temple, but he did not want to admit it to himself. Why did he not run then? He should have run. Instead he let Nicolò lead him in by the hand like an inexcusable fool. 

“God brought you to me,” Nicolò says. He is still holding his hands at his sides, palms open and facing Yusuf. “And God brought me to you, so that I could--please let me help you. Do not turn away from me again, please, I beg you.”

His voice is so sincere. How can Yusuf turn away? This man--Yusuf dreamed of him, when he was away. He felt his pain as if it was his own. Surely that _was_ the work of God--but how could God want this?

“This is the only way,” Nicolò says. He steps closer. “God meant for us to meet. You cannot deny this. The dreams, our deaths, all of it--the suffering and death was so that we would find one another and do God’s will. But to do that...you have to come with me, Yusuf. You have to come to God.”

He means it, so deeply. This goes down to the very core of him. It goes that far. Yusuf had thought--but he had been wrong, clearly. He had been so wrong. 

Nicolò’s hand touches his face and for a moment Yusuf turns into it. Lets his cheek rest in Nicolò’s palm. Just a moment, trembling with emotion, and then he pulls away. 

“What happened in Jerusalem?” Yusuf asks. 

Nicolò recoils.

“What happened,” Yusuf says. “In Jerusalem. Nicolò.” He is still shaking but he makes himself stand still.

His lover looks away, out over the gardens, and draws in a deep breath. It pains him, too, and that is the only reason Yusuf hasn’t already turned away. He remembers. He knows the truth. 

Nicolò is endlessly true; but there are many questions that Yusuf has not asked, and his stomach twists as he realizes why. _He knew_ , in some part of himself, but he was a coward who craved pleasure.

“What happened in Jerusalem,” Nicolò says with some difficulty, “was evil. The men who led--the princes were evil. They led the people astray--we came to help pilgrims. We came to help Christians who were being harmed by--”

“By Saracens?” Yusuf interrupts. He has been backing away by inches but now he stops and steps forward, stands tall directly before Nicolò, who automatically draws up to his full height. It is only two inches short of Yusuf. “You say that what happened was evil, but if you had been one of the princes, what would _you_ have done instead? Tell me, honestly, before God--what _should_ have happened to the people of Jerusalem?”

“They--should have--been--welcomed to God,” Nicolò stammers.

Yusuf takes a long, slow breath. He takes a step backward. “And if they did not want to convert?”

Nicolò’s face spasms, as if he truly cannot comprehend such a thing. “Yusuf.” He steps closer. “You want to hide from this, but you can’t. God has called us--”

“ _Whose god_?” Yusuf spits. “Because from where I stand, there’s no difference. You are the one who wants to divide us.”

“You cannot turn your face away from this--”

“I can, because you have chosen to hate who I am. You have chosen to hate those I call family and friends. You call us Saracens and think that we are _wrong_ and must be converted from our beliefs and corrected from our lives, when we have _never_ hurt you. You _killed me first, Nicolò_ ,” Yusuf shouts, cutting off Nicolò’s interjection. “I had done _nothing_ to you or your people, and you came to a beautiful city that I loved and you _burned it to the fucking ground!_ You killed me _first_!”

It isn’t clear who strikes the first blow in that moment: Yusuf is the one shouting but Nicolò definitely shoves him backwards and that’s what he reacts to, bringing his foot out sideways and stomping downwards.

Nicolò screams as something in his ankle cracks loudly. He lashes out, striking Yusuf in the throat then grabbing him by the hair. They go to the ground; they have to, Nicolò can’t stand with his ankle bent the way it is. In the back of his mind, Yusuf can hear instructions from Dowaud: strike at the points where nerves are most vulnerable. Keep breathing evenly. Use his weight to pin down his opponent. 

He can’t. It’s Nicolò, he’s hurt, Yusuf can’t--

Nicolò strikes at Yusuf’s throat with his elbow. It isn’t his teeth but it’s just as savage. Yusuf chokes, twisting in a corkscrew to get his hips under him then rolling to his feet.

He should walk away; Nicolò cannot follow. Except he can, he will, he’ll heal faster than Yusuf can run. 

Leaning down, Yusuf grabs hold of Nicolò’s hair. He is immediately seized in return. Nicolò’s fingernails dig into his wrist, twisting to bring Yusuf off-balance, but he staggers and keeps his feet. Nicolò bares his teeth but then stops, staring up at Yusuf’s face.

Yusuf realizes he is weeping. His eyes burn and his cheeks sting. It hurts just as much as anything else to feel so wounded and not be able to hide it: he thinks of how good it had felt to trust this man, how foolish he has been, and his eyes overflow. 

He manages to choke, “Listen to me. I never want to see you again. Do not seek me out. Forget my name, forget my face, and know that if I ever think of you, I will think only of how you never deserved _anything_ of what I felt for you.”

He shoves Nicolò down, letting go of his hair. Nicolò still has a grip on his wrist and grabs it with his other hand, his fingers tight as an iron manacle. Yusuf punches him in the side of the head, but he does not release his hold.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò gasps, “God meant for us to be together, I love you--”

A kind of mad desperation seizes Yusuf. He has to get away, he has to, or Nicolò will drag him down and fill his ears with sweet lies. He scrabbles at his waist, finds the hilt of his shimshar, and pulls it free of the scabbard one inch.

That is as far as he gets before Nicolò hits his arm.

He punches it perfectly at the elbow to make Yusuf’s arm go numb and tingling. Apparently even the priests of Christianity know where best to strike. Gritting his teeth, Yusuf knees Nicolò hard in the chest, driving him backward into the ground. The grip on his wrist is relentless, though, and Yusuf fights through the zinging pain in his elbow to wrench his shimshar out and lift it in the air.

Nicolò stares up at him, still clinging to his arm.

Yusuf brings the sword down as hard as he can. 

Blood splatters on both their tunics.

Nicolò falls flat, incomprehension turning swiftly to horror. Yusuf drops the shimshar and staggers a few feet back; blood pours down his front and he pants for breath between clenched teeth, groping the wrapped scarf off his own head. 

“Wait,” Nicolò says. “Mother of God, _Yusuf_!” He tries to stand but his ankle, still bent wrong, gives out when he tries to put weight on it. White shows around his eyes as he shoves Yusuf’s severed hand away from him, then snatches it back up from the ground and tries to shove it at Yusuf.

Black spots form on the edges of Yusuf’s vision, but he musn’t, he can’t--he couldn’t truly hurt Nicolò, even after everything, and he _hates that_ \--he wraps the scarf around the bleeding stump of his wrist--he turns and staggers away, stumbling over the rocky hillside. 

Behind him, Nicolò says his name, then calls it, then screams it. Yusuf keeps walking, shivering in shock and pain, and does not look back.

A/N

-*squints at the horizon, waiting for pitchforks*  
-There is some debate about St. James the Lesser being Jesus’ brother or his cousin. His mother is said to be Mary, who wept at Jesus’ feet at the Crucifixion; scholars can’t tell if this was meant to be the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, or Mary of Clopas, her sister. Too many Marys. Anyways, I chose to make Nicolò believe that he was Jesus’ brother as a way to express his longing for family, which Yusuf immediately picks up on. Nicolò, sweetie, you are not subtle.  
-Guess who spent a lot of time reading medieval cookbooks for this chapter! http://www.medievalcookery.com/etexts.html That website is fucking delightful, you can digitally page through whole cookbooks online.  
-The mountain of fire they reference in conversation is Mt. Etna, which erupted in 1030AD.  
-Abu’s strange, sweet nut-milk is orxata de xufa. Technically the earliest records of horchata date to the 13th century, but I took a little liberty with the timing of its development.   
-One interpretation of ‘al-Kaysani’ is ‘the wise,’ whereas ‘al-Tayyib’ (taken from the comics) means ‘the gentle’ or ‘the generous.’  
-The line “I die of love for you,” is a part of the poem “Love in Bloom” by Abu Nuwas (756-814AD). Remember that one for later.  
-A note about the dreams: I have seen various people interpret the dreams the immortals have of each other in different ways. The most popular fanon seems to be that they dream of one another until they meet, and then not at all after. I object to this interpretation solely on the grounds that it means Nicky and Joe never once dreamt of one another, since they met _at_ their deaths. That contradicts the spirit of what Nicky said, “It’s like destiny.” I interpret the dreams to happen whenever they are apart. So Nicky and Joe dream of each other when they are apart, and so do Andromache and Quỳnh. But that’s the next chapter. ;)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mahdia // Palermo
> 
> -o-
> 
> Warnings for PTSD, mention of previous familial abuse, multiple mental health spirals, disordered eating, sex as self-harm vomiting, a panic attack, and suicidal ideation.

Mahdia

The trip to al-Mahdīyah passes in a blur of pain. 

Before Yusuf even found Abu in the city, his hand had regrown itself. At first it looked like a mushroom swelling outward from the stump of his wrist, then each individual finger like a smaller mushroom sprouting from that weird lump. The whole process had taken a few hours, which he spent huddled in an alley, shivering and desperately trying to think of nothing at all. 

When Abu had asked about the blood on his tunic, Yusuf had spun a lie about bandits robbing an old man and his own heroic intervention. Coming so soon after their own adventure inland, Abu doesn’t question it for a second, just looks at Yusuf with no small amount of awe. 

On board the ship, Yusuf writes the full story of al-Quds and Nicolò, of the two strange women in not-so-distant lands, his death and resurrection, all of it--and then he folds the pages together along with the pictures he drew of the two women, binds them in a length of cloth, and puts them at the bottom of his bag. 

Every picture he has drawn of Nicolò he holds in his hands for a long time, letting himself grieve something that never existed; then he puts the edges to the flame and lets them burn.

-o-

Al-Mahdīyah is very much the same as he left it, though far more temperate in the closing months of the year. When he left nine months ago, it had been the start of summer and brutally hot; now a gentle rain falls on the harbor as he steps over the narrow gangplank onto the dock. In all directions, the shoreline alternates between rocky cliffs and sandy expanses. Ahead of him, the city is a familiar jumble of sloped buildings packed close together, their walls pale and their rooftops interconnected by draped cloth hung to shield the passersby below.

Someone has long since built a new home in the scarred places where his family’s house used to stand, where his mother died. Yusuf cannot even begrudge them that; it would be hard to look in that direction--was it south of the docks? Or north?--and see a gaping wound of empty earth. 

Abu sets about unloading grain into the storehouses; by tomorrow, merchants will be lined around the block with carts, but for now he shoos Yusuf away. After everything they’ve been through, Yusuf trusts him enough not to cheat at the tallies and besides, Yusuf is desperate to be _home_. 

The smell of cooking reaches his nose and he pauses in his descent from the dock, closing his eyes to breath deep. Oh, he has been away so long. Less than a year but it feels longer. Nearby, a woman is making lamb skewers in a fire pit just outside her home, the chermoula-scented smoke wafting perfectly over the dock. She eyes Yusuf cannily and charges him an outrageous price, but he is happy to pay. His family is one of the wealthiest in Al-Mahdīyah, and both of his parents firmly instilled the virtue of charity in him, if only as a self-protective measure against having his throat slit in the night and his wealth stolen from him. A man can either give to the beggars or expect the beggars to rise up and devour him whole.

He wolfs down the lamb just as the call goes out for midday prayer, and he joins the stream of people. It isn’t long before he is recognized by someone, a former neighbor whose name he can’t remember and whose flea-ridden carpets Yusuf never wants to buy. Fortunately he also recognizes the man’s companion, Ziyad, and Ziyad’s wife Aisha. There is not enough time before prayer to even properly greet one another, but by the time Maghrib has finished, Yusuf turns to find several groups of people converging on him. 

He had anticipated nothing less and puts on the smile that is expected of him. 

Ziyad assumes control, ushering Yusuf down the street to his home. His children race out into the street ahead of them to alert the household, and to gather several other neighbors from different parts in the city. Yusuf makes sure to compliment their number and health. “Allah has blessed us,” Ziyad declares proudly. “What about you, my brother, have you brought home a wife at last?”

“No,” Yusuf answers. “I have come home to find one.”

By the time they reach the house, the lanterns are lit, space has been cleared in the front rooms, and Ziyad’s second wife--heavy with yet another child--has brewed tea. In total, almost a dozen men pack into the front room, while their wives and children hover along the periphery. 

Once pleasantries have been exchanged, Ziyad asks the question that has brought everyone together: “Tell us, brother, what happened at al-Quds?” 

And oh, Yusuf must be so careful, here. With Ibrahim he had not hesitated to criticize the Caliphate’s failures; but that, apparently, has drawn notice if the assassins in al-Qāhirah were any indication. Nor does he wish to incite his own people to start another bloody and ill-fated revolt against the Caliphate. Their land has suffered enough already from such disputes...infighting has made them easy targets for the Franks and other Christians. 

So he tells them of how he came to be in the city, and the barbaric acts committed by the Franks, and the courage of the Fatimids, making sure to mention the city’s Jews who fought alongside them on the walls; the Jewish clans in this area have had trouble as of late and Yusuf would see them gain respect again.

Everyone has questions, of course. When they ask how he survived, he says, “I was blessed by Allah.”

The storytelling lasts for hours. It is quite late by the time Ziyad insists that he rest. He generously offers his bed to Yusuf, who takes it with only a little guilt, being by now completely exhausted. As he lays down after his ‘Isha prayer, he hears the gathering still breaking apart, voices discussing the story in the street outside, calling to one another. 

The wind smells like that very particular mix of desert and ocean. In the dark, breathing that familiar scent, Yusuf feels something deep inside of him unwind. He will be all right. He has been dealt a blow, a painful one, but he will recover. 

He flexes his right hand against his chest. His fingertips tingle. 

-o-

In the morning he doesn’t tarry longer than it takes for Fajr and a light morning meal: if he dawdles, Ziyad will have half the city lined up out of his door, wanting to hear the story firsthand. Yusuf returns to gather his belongings from the shipyard then hires a horse and turns its nose to the path out of town. 

The journey is a full day’s ride. Yusuf tries not to drive the horse too hard, as the road is still rocky and uneven, but the closer he comes, the more urgency seizes his heart. He cannot believe he delayed so long. He should have come straight here from al-Qāhirah. The sun beats down on his head and his mount sweats, yet still onward he rides. 

The sun is in his face when at last he sees the walls of al-Qayrawān. They are even more dilapidated than when he left, worn down by the wind and sun. The tower of the Great Mosque is lit against the sunset, still so beautiful in its loneliness. Around it, are the beautiful ruins of the universities, the libraries, the government buildings that now stand empty. For centuries this had been a place of spirituality, learning, and influence, until the Caliphate had pushed nomadic Arab tribes into the area to diminish al-Qayrawān’s power. 

It had worked. Yusuf had come to live here after his parents died, and even as a boy he’d understood that this was a place of ghosts. 

The muezzin calls but Yusuf only whispers an apology to God as he trots his tired horse through the streets, up the hill to the house he knows so well. The ancient oak tree, gnarled and bleached white by the sun, is as beloved to his sight as water for the soul. It yet stands tall, a skeleton reaching from its grave into the sunset. 

When he draws close to the gate, a servant left to stand guard gives a cry. It shames him to interrupt evening prayer thus, but he is so close, now, that he can’t not. 

Like a poked anthill, the household swarms out to greet him. There is his cousin, Hakim, limping along on his cane; his back is twisted, to such that he cannot work and no one has yet offered him a wife. Had Yusuf not taken him in, he might be a beggar in the streets, but here he smiles with joy and embraces Yusuf in greeting. Here, too, is Gwafa and his wife Tafsut: they served his parents loyally and were the ones who cared for Yusuf in the aftermath of his father’s death. Tafsut’s hands are scarred by burns where she tried to pull Yusuf’s mother to safety. They bow to him, weeping, until he pulls them up to kiss their cheeks. 

And here, coming slowest from the house, is his jdda, Zeğiga. She moves slowly, accompanied by a woman whom Yusuf does not know, but her eyes are as sharp as ever. 

He goes to her and kneels, kissing the hem of her loose trousers. “Get up, you silly boy,” she says, even as she pushes his turban off his head and presses her gnarled hands to his forehead, his cheeks. Yusuf imagines that her touch is wiping away all the pain, the grief and torment. “Hamdullilah. My sweet, silly boy, welcome home.”

-o-

Yusuf sleeps for hours. Long, glorious hours that stretch well into midday. If he doesn’t allow himself to think about his dreams, then it truly is paradise. 

When finally he rises, he decides to give himself the rest of the day off. His jdda, knowing full well his habits, has left out food instead of attempting to rouse him for either the morning or midday meal; he takes it into the courtyard in the center of the house, which is still beautiful even this late in the year. The well beneath the oak tree provides constant, fresh water, enough that his grandmother Zeğiga has cultivated some unusual plants. She is out here now, seated on a stone and plucking the dead heads off a flowering bush of some kind. 

“You are late,” she informs him.

“I needed rest, jdda, I was so tired.” It isn’t what she meant and they both know it. He had sent a letter from Cypros before he departed to al-Quds, telling her that it would take him another month to return home. “Things happened.”

She looks him over. When she helped form him from the dust of his childhood, she must have left a few holes in his skin, because she always sees right through to his heart. “Bad things.”

“Some of them felt good at the time.” There has been nothing, nothing that Yusuf could not tell her; even when his parents were alive, she had been the person to whom he whispered secrets that he feared to tell his mother and father. But now--wallah, where would he even start? He fears her disbelief: it would be easy enough to prove, but the last thing he wants is to open his throat in his jdda’s courtyard. To bring the corpses of al-Quds to her doorstep. To tell her about--

No. That is all behind him, now. He will not bring it home with him. 

“What is the name of your new servant?” he asks instead, dipping the khobz into a mix of egg and beans. It tastes like fire and he closes his eyes to savor the burn rather than meet Zeğiga’s sharp gaze. 

They chat comfortably for a time, until the servant in question, a pale-skinned woman, appears in the courtyard. “There is someone to see you,” she tells Yusuf in heavily-accented Arabic. 

Yusuf groans. “Not already.”

“What did you expect?” Zeğiga stands, dusting plant matter from her hands. “You are the most eligible unmarried man this side of Baḥr al-Rūm, I’ve been fending them off for the last year in your absence. You should have brought a wife home with you and ended the whole thing.”

Rubbing at his forehead, Yusuf sighs heavily. “I’m not awake enough for this.”

Her hand lands on his head and pets his curls. “Hear me. This is the last time I’m doing this for you. After this you have to deal with them yourself.”

Grabbing her fingers, Yusuf kisses them. “Of all people in the world, you have taught me what true kindness means.”

“Yes, yes, now hide in my bushes, silly boy.”

Yusuf truly does feel silly, hiding in the courtyard while his grandmother explains that Yusuf is out and couldn’t possibly receive any visitors today. She does pointedly name a day later in the week when the visitor--Yusuf thinks it might be Amir the horse-trader, who has four daughters--should feel welcome to return. At more than thirty, Yusuf is well past the age that he should have taken a wife--or, well, taken _another_. One such union had been planned by his grandmother some years ago: Fatima had been an entirely appropriate and unobjectionable young woman from al-Mahdīyah, but she had gotten sick shortly after the wedding. Their marriage had only lasted three years and in the final year of her life he had barely even seen her; whatever rights he had as her husband, he could not have torn her away from her family when it was clear that she would not survive the separation, nor gotten her with child when that, too, might have killed her. She had died of her illness at twenty-five years old, and Yusuf has not taken a wife since.

He knows the picture that paints: young love torn apart by death, and it pains him to have exploited Fatima’s death to excuse his absence from such a duty. He had genuinely liked her, at least in the two years that they’d had together and in truth he cannot say that he was saving himself for anything else.

He was, of course. And his jdda knows that perfectly well. 

Which is why, when she comes back to the courtyard, the first thing she says is: “On that subject, Nasir al-Fasih is dead.”

Yusuf stills, his eyes on the piece of bread he had been dipping into his breakfast. “When did that happen?” he asks eventually. He can feel her watching him. 

“Shortly after you left on your last trip. Apparently his household drank bad water--no, no, Khalida is fine, she sickened a bit with the rest of them but al-Fasih got the worst of it.”

Khalida Hasfa. To think of such a thing now, with his heart--no, he must not. That did not exist, except in his own imaginings. Yusuf must set it behind him if he is to continue with his life, here. This was what he has hoped for, for a long time; it was the first question he should have asked when he came home. “Where is she now?”

“She went back to her father’s house and has stayed there in mourning. That wretched brother of hers, Mennad, tried to marry her off again within a month...it was quite shocking to everyone, I think even the imam voiced his objections, but fortunately Samir put his foot down. I expect Mennad wanted to get her married again before you returned,” she adds bluntly.

That’s almost certain to be true. Mennad Hasfa wouldn’t risk such damage to his pious image unless he felt strongly about the subject, and he’s hated Yusuf ever since...well, since Yusuf’s affair with Mennad’s younger brother, Muhammed. 

That also means that he’s likely plotting a marriage right now, or finding some excuse to send Khalida away. Which means there’s no time to waste, especially not on remembering something that never was. Yusuf finishes his meal and stands, walking over to kiss Zeğiga’s forehead. “Excuse me, jdda, I have a letter to write.”

“You certainly do,” Zeğiga replies with a smug smile. 

-o-

The letter he writes is not addressed to Khalida, of course. That would be vastly improper and presumptuous, even if everyone involved knows precisely what his intentions are. He’s also fairly certain that his suit won’t be turned down so long as he goes about it in the right way. The Hasfa clan trades in textiles and has for a few generations. Several years ago, the oldest son Mennad took over for his ailing father Samir, but in family matters he can still potentially be overruled. 

If it were up to Mennad, he likely wouldn’t even read the letter before tearing it to pieces. From what Yusuf has heard, writing to Samir Hasfa would be risky: his mind wanders frequently and more than once he has literally wandered off into the desert and required a swift retrieval. 

So Yusuf doesn’t write to him, either. He writes to Lalla Hasfa, the aged matriarch of the family, who is at that delicate age when a woman could potentially maybe receive correspondence from a man several decades her junior without it being scandalous. Or maybe it could be, depending on how the wind blows.

Yusuf’s gamble pays off: he arrives at the estate of the Hasfa family in the mid-afternoon to find Lalla waiting for him, with Khalida standing nearby. He can imagine what transpired shortly before his arrival--comments made about the impropriety of meeting with a man and the necessity of having a mahram, followed by the insistence that only Khalida would be suitable to the task. Likely Mennad is out at his place of business and his forgetful father Samir would have been easy to persuade.

The cunning of Lalla Hasfa should never be underestimated. Yusuf counts himself fortunate to discover such a formidable ally in his mission. 

He presses a hand over his heart. “As-salāmu ʿalaykunn.”

“Wa ʿalayka s-salām,” replies Lalla Hasfa. Black tattoos zig-zag over her wrinkled cheeks and cover her chin. “You are kind to pay an old woman a visit.”

Yusuf smiles, letting his eyes slide sideways to Khalida, who keeps her gaze modestly lowered; only a quirk at the corner of her mouth betrays her. She’s even more beautiful than he remembers, with dark kohl around both eyes and two thin lines tattooed on her chin. She wears a black cowl over a bright purple head-wrapping adorned with silver sovereigns that flutter with her movements, reflecting the sunlight. 

Yusuf gestures towards the road, letting Lalla Hasfa lead the way but careful not to walk too obviously at Khalida’s side. “You do me a kindness in accepting my visit, sister. I have been away on business a long time and would like to hear the news of what has happened in my absence.”

“Wallah, you think anything interesting happens here?” The old woman walks with a cane, now, which he does not remember from two years ago; he delicately does not ask about it. “The scholars sit in their ruins and wail about all they have lost. The rest of us tend our crops and guard our doors from the Banu Sulaym. You are the one who has gone out into the world.”

They want to hear about al-Quds, of course. The version that he relates is the most heavily edited yet, delicately emphasizing Yusuf’s courage and sense of responsibility towards his fellow man. It is not a lie. It still pains him. There is much that he has--no, do not think of it. He tells them what he must, and it is not a lie.

Once their curiosity has been sated on that subject, Yusuf gratefully moves on to other stories. He spends the time not looking directly at Khalida but studying her all the same. 

At twenty-six, Khalida is not at all like he remembers her. She has been married and widowed and born two children since last he saw her--only one of whom lived past infancy, a son who now resides with her dead husband’s family--but she seems to have born up well under those hardships. It makes him admire her even more. 

He remembers Muhammed, her twin, much better. Without the barrier of gender, they had become close friends, and then lovers; but Muhammed is gone, ostensibly disappeared on his way to Mecca. At nineteen he had been young to take a pilgrimage but not too young to use the excuse to escape their brother’s critical eye. Mennad and Yusuf had been contemporaries in the madrasa and even friends at one point, until Mennad’s particular brand of insufferable self-righteousness had proven too much. 

Coincidentally, this was right around the time that Muhammed had grown into his too-big ears and emerged from puberty as the kind of young man that poets write about. 

Yusuf, being a poet, had. 

Their relationship hadn’t been any great secret, but went discreetly unmentioned by everyone except fucking Mennad. His animosity had grown in strength until it became physical, at which point Muhammed had turned to Yusuf for help. 

Last he heard, Muhammed was living in Baghdad, somewhere that Yusuf hopes to travel one day.

Even more, he has kept a hope flickering that Khalida and Muhammed might be reunited. Since she reached womanhood, he has desired no wife other than her...for her sake, for Muhammed’s, even for his own. Even when Fatima was alive he had strategized about how to ask her if she would be insulted by a second wife; Mennad, the fucker, had persuaded their father to marry her off while Yusuf was preoccupied with Fatima’s illness. 

He might not remember Khalida well from the days when she and her brother ran barefoot among the ruins of the old universities while he--seven years older--kept watch, and of course he had not breached propriety to visit her since, but Yusuf has loved the possibility of her for most of his life. 

He can only hope that she feels some affection for him in return, and not simply the grasping desire to marry a wealthy merchant. Yusuf is not so foolish to marry strictly for love, but he hopes to marry the sort of woman with whom he might build such a thing. He had thought Fatima might be the type: she had been clever and quick to laugh, but her lungs had been so terribly weak. Such a bright, cheerful flame too soon extinguished.

His grandmother has admonished him many times against romanticism, but to do anything else seems a true act of folly. If you’re going to live your entire life with someone, surely it must be with a person whom you love, not someone that you merely tolerate.

Of course he does not raise the prospect of marriage directly with Lalla Hasfa at their first meeting, but the simple act of making the visit so soon after his return makes clear his intentions to anyone with half a brain. Mennad is going to be furious. Yusuf can only hope that Lalla Hasfa is clever enough to deflect his rage, and that Khalida can avoid the physical repercussions of it better than Muhammed, at least long enough to make the courtship official. Yusuf’s reputation as a hero--bolstered by the stories that Abu is likely already spreading at the port about their adventure in Sicilia--will help.

It is a delicate dance and as he takes his leave Yusuf breathes out, closing his eyes momentarily as he runs through everything said in the conversation with Lalla Hasfa, seeking anything that might lead his path astray. In the absence of any glaring breaches of etiquette or social niceties, he mounts his horse, patting her neck in apology, and rides for home. 

It is not far but as he is riding along the ridge between the Hasfa home and his own, he is hailed by a rider heading in the opposite direction. It takes Yusuf a moment to recognize the man waving at him with a big grin. Then he exclaims, “Abdul, is that you?” 

“Yes! I have just come calling at your house looking for you. Come, I have water, let us pray together.”

The sun is just going down and Yusuf probably could have made it home; but Abdul is wearing much nicer robes than the last time Yusuf saw him, and it takes only a bit of prodding to discover that he is now an administrator of the Caliphate in this territory. He says this without any apparent artifice, and from what Yusuf remembers of their days in the madrasa together, Abdul was never capable of lying. 

Still, Yusuf thinks of the assassins sent after him and keeps his shimshar handy. 

They pray together in the grass atop the ridge. It is a beautiful sunset and for the first time in a long time Yusuf prays as he should, filled with God’s light and love for the world. The sun warms his face and the wind ruffles his hair like his jdda’s hand. He remembers little of his own mother, expect that he loved her dearly; death has made her holy in his mind, beyond reproach. Certainly there must have been days when she angered him, or vice versa, but those memories are not what have stayed. He remembers a warm smile and a soft touch, the smell of fresh-cut lamb and spices. 

Afterwards, they walk together back towards Yusuf’s house. Yusuf was right in his initial assessment: Abdul is managing the territory around al-Mahdīyah without much input from the Caliphate. As such, he wants to hear about al-Quds--Yusuf is already so tired--and Yusuf’s opinions about the general movement of Franks into Caliphate territories.

“Do you think they will come here?” he asks, perfectly serious. Yusuf has to stop himself from laughing: it’s a perfectly reasonable question given the Genoese attack on al-Mahdīyah when they were both young. Certainly there are forces pushing into the lands on all sides of them, but without the motive of reprisal for piracy, Yusuf cannot imagine a less appealing target than their tribe’s dusty homeland. While al-Qayrawān was once an important place, it is a ruins now, and al-Mahdīyah is little better. 

He provides what reassurances he can while they walk their horses along the ridge. Abdul bids him goodbye at the gate, at which point Yusuf gratefully hands off his bridle to the waiting Gwafa and goes in for dinner. 

Another surprise awaits him: Zeğiga has gathered all of the letters she has from his sister Farah and presents them to him. It is a joy and a relief to read them, especially the parts intended as secret messages for his eyes only, assurances in codes that only they know that she is truly well and her husband has been kind to her as promised. Yusuf had chosen the man for her, so it brings him nearly to tears to hear that his judgment was not proven wrong. It was of course a political benefit to him, but he would never have agreed if he hadn’t carefully researched the man and found him faultless. 

He can only hope that he finds similar contentment in his own prospective union. 

-o-

Sometime in the night, Yusuf sobs himself awake.

He sits on the edge of his bed and rubs at his thighs, rocking back and forth as he struggles to regain control of his breath. The despair that flooded him retreats by degrees like a wave gone too far inland, dragging important things out to sea. 

It isn’t his. _It isn’t his._

The dream hadn’t been much. A room, a window, a bed. Perfect, blank misery with no hope of reprieve...worse, no _desire_ for one. 

Moonlight shines soft across Yusuf’s room. He traces it with his eyes then turns to follow its path to the nearly-full white circle in the sky. 

“None of it was real,” he reminds himself when he can speak without his voice breaking. There is no one to hear but himself. None of it was real. If it was, then he would have to admit to himself that his heart is a broken thing, not fit to love another. 

He cannot ever trust someone that way again, and the thought makes despair flood back in.

It takes him hours to fall back asleep.

Palermo

Many years later, Yusuf will ask Nicolò what happened in the time after their argument and Yusuf’s departure--what Nicolò did, where he went.

Nicolò will answer, “I waited.”

Ostensibly, he finds employment in Nadja’s café, transcribing letters for customers who cannot read or write. Nicolò’s Latin is not particularly good but he learns Arabic quickly enough from Nadja in exchange for help with some of her more violent customers. One of her girls, Maria, expresses desire for him and Nicolò feels his insides freeze, then forcefully thinks, _Yes, yes_. He lets her take him to bed, then again, and again. He never stops hating it but he never objects, either, and at least he gets better at pleasuring her.

That goes on for several weeks until he cannot bear it any longer and flees his penance like the sinner he is. Without anywhere to stay or anyone to talk to, he starts to slip into memories. It is warmer here than Genoa, but he spends his time the same way, wandering and trying to appear as though he has somewhere to go. Even churches, previously his only sanctuary, are lost to him now: he cannot bring himself to take the Eucharist until he has been confessed and performed penance, but he cannot bring himself to visit the confessional, either.

What he did with Yusuf was a sin, even if he can’t quite grasp the full enormity of his wrong. He took selfish pleasure from someone and offered only poison in return, like his father before him--but even that seems insufficient to encompass how badly he has offended God. To confess it would be to absolve himself in a way that Yusuf will never share in, now, and that seems an even greater evil than the ones he has already committed. 

When he prays he stumbles over the simple _Pater noster_ and sometimes cannot even manage that, just kneels in whatever stable or half-crumbled home is his shelter for the night and silently begs for forgiveness. 

The exact timeline of this period escapes him.

And then. There is a woman, standing in the street before him. She is short, with long black hair and two thick eyebrows like slashes below a high forehead. He knows her; he has seen her a hundred times in his dreams. 

“Ha!” she barks. A grin splits her face as she jabs her pinky finger at him. “ _Ha!_ ”

Her grin continues unabated as she swaggers closer to him, one hand hooked in her belt and the other resting casually on the pommel of her--it must be a sword, but the handle is unexpectedly long. 

“There _are_ two of you,” she says. “Andromache owes me coin.”

Or that’s what Nicolò thinks she says; her Greek is atrocious.

“Who are you?” he asks in that language. He hasn’t spoken in a week and his voice scrapes out of him.

“Ooo, you sound bad. You look very bad. You are lucky I decided to come here instead of the desert city. My name is Quỳnh. There are two of you, yes? You and an Arab man?”

“Aznagi.”

“What?”

“He is Aznagi. Not Arab.”

“Whatever, so long as there are two. So much coin she owes me. Come. Ahn says your people make good wine, I want some!”

She sets off at a brisk pace and Nicolò stumbles after her, struggling to catch up even with his much longer legs. Nothing seems to slow her march through the streets, certainly not the stares pointed in her direction or the usual churn of activity which magically scatters at her approach. One merchant actually dodges up onto his table of goods in order to avoid her. She is not a large woman, nor does she wear a menacing expression; indeed, she looks around her with bright curiosity at the people and the buildings, even stopping to admire an archway. Her presence, however, exceeds her small stature.

It’s a struggle to speak. “The other woman...is Andromache?”

“Yes. My great Scythian love. She did not believe me when I said there were two of you! So we made a wager, and I have won. There has never been two before, but have not been much anyway, so what makes her think she knows? Just because she is older, she says.” She punctuates this with a rude noise then glances sideways. “What is your name, little mouse?”

“Nicolò.”

“Nicolò,” she repeats, butchering it with a frown. “No. I call you Nico. Where is wine, Nico? Wait, do you speaks Latin?”

“Yes.”

“Oh good,” she says, switching to that language, which flows much easier from her tongue. “If you find me some wine, I will answer whatever questions you want.”

A coin is tossed in his direction. It isn’t a denomination that he recognizes and he has a feeling that it’s actual solid gold. It does buy them a fine bottle of wine, once he manages to stumble in the direction of a vintner who doesn’t immediately slam his door at the sight of Nicolò--disheveled, dark circles under his eyes--and Quỳnh--tiny yet somehow towering.

The solid gold coin probably helps.

They travel down to the water, passing several work sites where the new rulers of Sicilia no doubt intend to remake the city to their liking. It is the hottest part of the day, and work has stopped as the populace slumbers. A staircase leads down to a walkway just along the water, close enough that it might very well be submerged in high tide. 

Finding a rock wall against which to put her back, Quỳnh removes her boots--still shaggy with the hair of some animal--and lets her dainty feet splash in the water. Every wave threatens to soak her completely, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

Holding the bottle up to the light, she squints at it, then takes her first drink. “Mmm. Not bad. Now, you have questions for me.”

Nicolò crouches awkwardly against the wall. “I don’t know what to ask,” he admits. That is a lie; he does, but he is so afraid of the answer. “Where do you come from?” he asks instead. 

“I come from Văn Lang, the land surrounding Sông Hồng.” She glances at him with a smirk. “I might as well have said I come from the sky. Even Andromache did not know the land of my people. Well, let me see.” As she speaks, she tucks the wine bottle between her knees and lifts one of the leather bags she carries across her shoulders. From within she pulls out pickled fish and some kind of flat cakes, both of which she rips into pieces with her fingers without bothering to pray. “I come from a land so far to the east that you meet the sea again, where Lạc Long Quân and u Cơ raised their hundred children and divided them between the mountains and the sea. I was born the daughter of a farmer and I died the daughter of a farmer when the fucking northern tribesmen raided our village, and then I got back up again and killed the men who had killed me.

“I do not know how long I have lived,” she continues, “but it has been at least two thousand years since I found Andromache, though she tried to--”

“ _Two thousand years?!_ ” Nicolò croaks. 

“Oh, that is nothing. Do you know of the great tombs built in Egypt? Andromache remembers when they were being built. She recognized them from your dream! She remembers the hairy elephants that used to wander in lands far to the north, before they all died out. She lived through the great flood, when the sea tried to steal back the land. She thinks she was alive almost four thousand years before I was even born--she says her people actually worshipped her as a god, but I think she might have made that part up to impress me.”

A growing buzz fills Nicolò’s ears. “She is--she is six thousand years old? She is still alive?”

“Yes. We stop aging at the moment of our death. No one ever worshipped _me_ as a god...some people thought I had been granted powers by the goddess, but others were just afraid. They got together and drove me away. Do you want some water? You really don’t look good.”

She offers--the waterskin, that’s what she’s holding out, a waterskin. Nicolò can’t seem to get his eyes to focus on it. Something is happening to him, something terrible--he will never die, it will go on like this forever. His one remaining hope had been that if he waited long enough, he would age and meet a mortal end that way, but if he does not age--then the holy love and eternal life with Jesus that was promised to him will never--

He scrabbles for the edge of the stone embankment and retches into the water. Distantly he hears Quỳnh exclaim something and pull her feet up, but he cannot--there is nothing in him but bile and he wipes shakily at his mouth then heaves again, get splashed in the face with a wave that probably brought his stomach contents right back to him. 

Eventually the buzz in his head lessens and he collapses onto his side on the sun-warmed stone. From what appears to be the other end of a long, narrow tunnel, he sees Quỳnh’s face. She’s still chewing on her bread cakes, watching him pant against the ground.

“This is Hell,” he tells her. 

“I don’t know that word. Fire?”

“ _Inferos. Iblis. Tartarum._ Hell is where God is not, and if I cannot die, then I cannot be with God.”

The thought rushes over him, screaming in his ears and reducing his vision to a jumble of light and color. He is dying--except he cannot die, this is worse, it will always be like this. Him, alone. Whatever is in him is so vile and anathema that not even offering his life in the Holy Lands could make him worthy of God’s love. He has been cast out. 

“ _Mẹ kiếp_ , you’re not taking this well. Come on, snap out of it! I didn’t fall to pieces when Andromache told me.” Water splashes across Nicolò’s face; she is tossing handfuls of the sea at him. He curls up tighter, wrapping his arms around his head. “Listen, you might die some day! There was another one, Lykon. He was born after me but he died four hundred years ago. He barely lived a thousand years.”

Nicolò swipes water from his face, both sea and tears. “There are others?”

“Not anymore.” Quỳnh looks out over the water. “I think that’s why Andromache didn’t want to come find the two of you. She kept saying that you weren’t ready, but how would she know? She’s not really a god, even if she acts like it sometimes. I loved Lykon, too, but she felt more responsible when he died, as if there was something she could have done with secret magical god-powers. There wasn’t. He looked at us and told us it was time, and then he died. So who knows, maybe that will happen for you, too, one day, but that isn’t today, so sit up and drink some water, we have work to do, _đồ ngốc_.”

She pulls him back up into a sitting position and presses the waterskin to his lips. When she does the same with a piece of the pickled fish, he tries to refuse, but she persists. “Eat. I know what you are trying to do, I have tried, too, and it didn’t work. If you really wanted to die, you would, so either figure out how to kill the part of you that still wants to live, or--well, don’t do that. Andromache might run off into the wilds again.”

Through force of will alone, she manages to get him to eat a few bites. It tastes like ash in Nicolò’s mouth. 

Quỳnh smiles at him, patting his cheek. “Do you know what might make you feel better?”

Nothing. God hates him. There is nothing that can—

She yanks his head to the side and there’s a loud crack of bone.

-o-

When he jerks back to life, he’s lying slumped against the wall. Quỳnh is kicking her feet in the ocean again and drinking. Lowering the bottle, she wipes a forearm across her mouth. “Want to know how to do that?”

Nicolò’s hand gropes for his throat. “What did you--? Did you kill me?”

“Yes. I broke your neck. The bones at the top are very weak, if you break them sometimes people die instantly. And even if they don’t die, they’re usually hurt bad enough that they can’t do anything but lie there. It’s a quick way to kill someone, Andromache showed me.” 

She draws her other leg in front of her and props her elbow on her knee, then her chin on her hand. “To be honest, I had this big plan that I would find you first and tell you everything. Then Andromache would have to come see you, and take you with us. She and Lykon were warriors before they died, and I learned quickly where to stick the pointy end of a sword. But you’re not much of a fighter, are you, little mouse?”

“I was. I took the cross and joined the Holy War. They said--when they finally gave me a crossbow, they said that I was strange because I was so calm. I knew I would die soon, and so I didn’t feel afraid. But then we took the city, and...and on the hill up to the Holy Sepulchre, they lined the walkway with the heads of children. The people of the city had taken their children up to the Temple Mount, to take refuge in the church there, and the, they, the men I had marched with, they d-dragged them out in groups and hacked off their heads in the _dirt_ like ani--”

His voice breaks. The wave pours over him again, thundering down on his head. 

Bone cracks.

-o-

When he wakes this time, Quỳnh is sitting on his chest. She has a knife in her hand and all the jovility is gone from her slender, delicate face. A few waves must have come over the edge of the walkway, because they are both damp.

“Once, Andromache lost her head in a fight,” she says in a low voice. “Literally. It rolled down a hill into a stream. It was night, and we were in a jungle. It took Lykon and I a few hours to find her and reunite her with her body. Once she did, she said she had been awake, a little--just a few blinks here and there, before she died again. If you want, I can give you that: cut off your head right here and cast it in the ocean, then bury your body on land. You would still be alive, but only barely. You have only to say yes.”

Underneath her and flat on his back with a knifepoint touching the corner of his jaw, Nicolò holds very still. He should say yes, should have the courage to make this final surrender in the hopes that God will finally accept his sacrifice and love him again, but his mouth won’t make the words. She is right: something in him still clings to life. 

Quỳnh’s lips pull back from her teeth, the unsheathing of a hidden blade that every merchant and mother sensed today as surely as antelope scent a lion on the wind. 

“Did you kill little children?” she asks.

Nicolò shakes his head. His neck crackles as he does so, still healing. The knife digs in but does not pierce his skin.

She examines him for deceit and, finding none, puts away the knife and sits back onto his thighs. Nicolò slowly props himself up on his elbows. Being killed two times in rapid succession takes a lot out of a man; his head swims. 

“Did you try to stop the men who did this thing?” When he nods, she smirks. “Good. A warrior after all. Andromache and I, we have stopped things like that from happening many times. Stand up and I will show you how to do it better.”

Still Nicolò hesitates. Since he was a child, he believed that only God could love him, and that His love was the only way that Nicolò would not be completely alone forever. But the vision that he thought was Jesus was actually Yusuf, and Yusuf hates him. 

Well, all right then. He is alone, in Hell, sealed outside of God’s love, but what has changed inside of him matters little to the world. He is no buyer of indulgences, and he has never needed the threat of Hell to serve others, so why should its reality stop him now? 

He cannot ever be loved but God has still granted him this gift for a reason. He tried to find its meaning in Yusuf and failed miserably; and now someone else has found him, so it is time to try again.

“You’re sitting on my legs,” he rasps.

Quỳnh grins at him, gets up, and offers Nicolò her hand. 

He takes it, and stands.

A/N  
-Nicolò: “God, please send me a sign. Send your nicest angel to be my friend.”  
Quỳnh: *pops out of a burning building, cackling maniacally*  
-Many thanks to itsme-imhere on Tumblr for the sensitivity read w/r/t Quỳnh’s characterization and background, as well as the creation beliefs and the swear words. And as always thanks to lady-writes on Tumblr for the sensitivity read of African characters.  
-Kairouan, or āl-Qayrawān, in northern Tunisia is a World Heritage site. https://www.worldheritagesite.org/list/Kairouan  
-There’s a long and fascinating history of tattoo work in amazigh and especially Tunisian history. http://aswad.ma/2018/12/10/manel-mahdouani-amazigh-revival/  
-I am basing the characterization of Quỳnh on every single short woman that I have ever known in my entire life, especially my wife, who is literally sitting across from me sharpening her fingernails into sharp points as I type this.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monte Pellegrino // Kairouan
> 
> -o- 
> 
> Many thanks to lady-writes and itsme-imhere for the sensitivity reads. Warnings for more disordered eating and PTSD.

Monte Pellegrino

In a small village outside of Palermo, in the foothills of the mountain, lives an old woman who gasps at the sight of Quỳnh. She whispers something in an awed voice but Nicolò does not quite understand her language. 

“Did you think we would not?” Quỳnh asks in Latin as she follows the woman into her home. Behind her, Nicolò stays close to the doorway. Two months in Quỳnh’s company has taught him that she does not watch her back--to the degree of presenting the world a deliberate challenge--and while weeks of training in hand-to-hand combat has already made him painfully aware of her capabilities in that regard, he does not think it wise to attract attention. He has seen the fevered violence that his people can inflict in the name of God against those they believe to be in league with dark and demonic forces, and he can easily imagine the way they might turn on a foreign woman who speaks of goddesses and rises from the dead. 

“I did not know whether you would return in my lifetime,” the old woman says in Latin as she ushers them inside. “I have trained my nieces in all of the necessary tasks, but I so hoped to see you again. But tell me, where is Andromache?”

“To the south, on another matter. Nicolò,” Quỳnh says over her shoulder, “this is Tuccia Zofia d’Uditore, an old friend. Tuccia, this is Nicolò di Genoa. He is my kin.”

Tuccia throws him a startled look. “Another!”

“Yes,” Quỳnh answers. Nicolò says nothing.

Tuccia frowns. “A man?”

“Yes.”

Tuccia frowns harder. “From Genoa?”

Quỳnh laughs. Nicolò, never adept at charming others, shifts his feet awkwardly. “He is our kin,” Quỳnh repeats, “and I have come to train him.”

“Hm.” Tuccia still casts Nicolò a doubtful gaze. He avoids her gaze and instead looks around the house. It is old, stone mixed with wood and repaired multiple times; the ceiling above him has crumbled in one corner and he can see up into the second level, which contains an assortment of dusty objects. Narrow windows look out into the mountains and bay and a pot sizzles over the fireplace.

The most noticeable--and cleanest--thing in the entire house is the double-sided axe hung on the wall, its face emblazoned with intricate symbols and its handle wrapped in fine leather. 

Tuccia leads them into the back of the house and up a narrow, steep staircase, climbing it with surprising nimbleness. “I hope that you will stay long enough to meet my grandchildren. They are strong and I have trained them all well, but I fear they think their mothers have told them all a myth. Young people these days! Here we are.”

The upstairs is as dusty and dark as Nicolò first glimpsed, until Tuccia crosses to a wall and casts open a pair of shutters, letting in the morning sun. Once his eyes adjust, Nicolò realizes that the objects strewn around the room are weapons and suits of armor, the make of which he could never hope to recognize. From the look on Quỳnh’s face as she caresses the breast plate of an armor set far too large for her, she knows its owner very well.

“All the children have their own blades now, but of course we have tended to these.” Plucking a curved sword from its mount, Tuccia shakes back her shawl and unsheathes the blade in one swift motion. Nicolò finds himself staring down its length. She smirks at him then replaces the blade. “Is there a special weapon that you desire, my lady?”

Quỳnh turns from the armor and lifts an eyebrow at Nicolò. Yusuf’s sword hangs from his narrow pack, but when she tried to teach him in blades, he refused to touch it even on point of death, literally. Thus, they have come here. “A straight shortsword, one of Andromache’s. Double-edged, but not too sharp.”

Tuccia taps her lips then holds up a finger and bustles into a dark corner to dig through a wooden chest. Nicolò glances at Quỳnh, who smiles and speaks to him in her mangled Greek, “I have spoke to you of many people in the world who know us. We saved Tuccia long ago and now she keeps our swords.”

As Nicolò quickly learns, this is something of an understatement: sixty years ago when Muslim rule first began to fracture on the island and bandits ran unchecked, Andromache and Quỳnh had saved the lives of not just Tuccia but her three daughters as well. After adopting a fourth, they had relocated here, where Andromache and Quỳnh spent the next seven years training Tuccia and each of her daughters how to fight.

The four daughters had in turn either borne their own children or adopted them. Every place in the world has lost children, orphaned by war or abandoned and unwanted; bolstered by the coin that Andromache and Quỳnh had left to them and emboldened by their ability to protect themselves and their property, Tuccia’s clan had built a secret stronghold at the foot of Monte Pellegrino, and filled it with those children.

By the time Quỳnh leads Nicolò out onto a large ring of well-trodden earth behind Tuccia’s house, news has spread and Nicolò steps out under a cloudy sky to the sight of over a dozen children of various ages and skin colors, gathered in the low brush around the practice area. He stares at them and they stare back, some with their fingers in their noses. 

For a frozen moment all Nicolò can think of is Jerusalem, and the row of little heads leading up to the Temple Mount.

There’s a flash in the corner of his eye and he jerks away. Not fast enough: a far too familiar pain bursts along the front of his neck and he grabs at it, feeling blood fill his palm. Several children scream and he struggles to turn away from them, not let them see this, but already his limbs are going numb and he falls to the ground...

And then he wakes. The shortsword is still in his hand. Somewhere nearby, Tuccia and Quỳnh are speaking loudly, their voices projected away from him. When he opens his eyes, he sees Quỳnh’s back, her bloody sword in her hand. Beyond her, the row of children stare wide-eyed, some clutching the littles.

One of them definitely screams when Nicolò sits up and throws his sword at Quỳnh’s back. 

It actually strikes her belly as she starts to turn, likely hearing the whistle of the blade, and she folds forward around it. Pain wrestles with amusement on her face as she meets his eye. “You had better come and take that back,” she chokes. “Because if it’s still there...when I wake...then I will have two swords.”

She collapses on her side. A hush has fallen over the children, whose eyes dart between Quỳnh and Nicolò. Tuccia has located a tree stump and taken a regal seat, watching with interest. A middle-aged woman who must be one of her daughters has joined the children; she studies Nicolò with a wary frown as he gets to his feet and staggers over to Quỳnh, pushing her onto her back and taking hold of the sword. 

Her eyes snap open and she sweeps out with her curved blade. Fortunately it’s meant to be wielded two-handed, so she scores only a glancing blow against his ankle. Nicolò limps away, falling into a fighting stance.

Quỳnh heaves to her feet and grins at him. “Lesson number one. Keep your weapon in hand unless you are _very_ sure of killing your opponent. Now, turn your right foot toward me. More. Don’t slump like that, keep your shoulders squared. Bend your wrists more. Fighting with a sword is different from fighting with your hands: if you swing wrong with your hands the worst you will do is break your fingers, but your own sword can kill you without your enemy even touching it. Now, feel the weight of it. Doesn’t seem like much, eh? Hold it still for too long, though, and it will bear you to the ground, so--movement.” She sweeps her sword around her in several graceful arcs. “Use the weight of the sword to pull you into the next blow instead of trying to hold it still and then moving from there.”

As she teaches him, several of the braver children, who had withdrawn at the bloodshed, creep back to the edges of the ring and eagerly gather up wooden swords to follow along with the lesson. They look to be doing a better job than he is, and Nicolò grimly tightens his grip on his sword.

Quỳnh spends about half an hour teaching him basic sword movements, but she’s clearly an impatient teacher. Fortunately another one of Tuccia’s daughters arrives shortly before midday and Quỳnh waves for her to take over. The woman introduces herself as Gerlanda. She beckons several of the children closer. “This is Matteo, Saverina, and Maria. They will show you each of the forms, and then you will show the younger children.”

It is an excellent system: the most proficient children teach the next, who teach the next, and so on down the line, leaving Gerlanda and the other elders to move among the ranks, correcting posture and movements. Of the three assigned to work with him, Saverina is clearly the superior fighter, but she is hesitant with him, being at most thirteen and likely frightened of the blood that he hasn’t quite managed to wipe away from his throat. Matteo and Maria warm to him quickly enough and don’t seem troubled by the blood, but fumble their swords almost as often as he does. 

When it comes time to teach the younger children, Gerlanda wisely tells them, “Put down the swords and teach them to fight with their hands.”

That much, Nicolò already has a sense for, though he is at first reluctant to use the skills that Quỳnh has taught him on children--until one of them, a child of barely twelve, nearly dislocates his knee. Their style of fighting is more fluid and varied than Quỳnh’s, which is precise and sharp; Nicolò wonders if this is due to the influence of the legendary Andromache, whom he still has only glimpsed in his dreams. 

Practice goes on for the entire afternoon, though many come and go from the group, clearly rotating through their own daily chores. It seems the entire town belongs to them, about seven houses in all and the fields beyond. There are goats here, and a few horses. When Quỳnh calls Nicolò over to rest, a bucket of cool water and a plate of Vermicelli and spiced white bread is waiting for him. It smells so good that Nicolò shovels half of it in his mouth before the customary illness grips him.

He manages to eat the rest of the plate out of sheer stubbornness and unwillingness to insult the hospitality of whomever made the food. It sits inside of him like an unyielding block and he swallows again and again, willing himself not to become sick. 

Near him and dozing in the shade, Quỳnh speaks up. “It has been two moons since I met you, little mouse, and still you never squeak unless I poke you first.”

Nettled, he turns to her. “You have told me the names of people like Tuccia that I can trust. You have taught me how to kill a man ten different ways with my bare hands, usually by killing me. But can you tell me what God wants me to do with all of this?”

“No, but then, I don’t believe in your god.”

“Then there are no answers you have that I’m interested in hearing.”

They sit in the gathering heat of a late summer day, probably one of the last before the rains of autumn arrive. Somewhere nearby, a number of children are picking tomatoes. Finally, Quỳnh sighs. “Fine, all right.”

Sitting up, she scoots a little closer in the trampled grass. “I don’t believe in your god, but something made us this way, yes? Andromache, me, Lykon, you--all fighters. Is your Yusuf the same?”

Nicolò thinks of Cairo and the deft twirl of blades. Jerusalem, and the way Yusuf charged his position despite suffering at least two deaths at Nicolò’s hands. He called himself a trader, but he never once shied from a fight, even when he himself was not threatened. “Yes.”

“Fighters. Why? There are many warriors in the world, why make some who cannot die? Because like all things, we are needed. We do what others cannot. Tuccia--we saved her and her daughters. There are many people in the world who fight for what they think is right, but too often they die of it. Too often, fighting for what is right _means_ dying, because what is right and what is _powerful_ are very rarely the same thing.”

“But it’s so...” 

“So small? Yes. We are just a few people in a big world. Why not make more of us? Why not make an army? Let me tell you a story, little mouse. Have you heard of the battle of Marathon?”

Nicolò frowns. “It was in Greece, yes. Why?”

“Ten thousand Athenians,” Quỳnh says softly. “Against more than double that number of Persian invaders. Andromache and I were there disguised as men. They came up the beach but there was a pass, a narrow one, that they had to travel through in order to reach higher ground. We put ourselves there, and stood. For fifteen hours we fought and died and rose again, one after the other. Like a dance. We started to time our deaths to the other’s rising, until it felt like it was one life, one death, a serpent eating its own tail. And then we were running, running together, laughing while the Persians raced back to their ships. Ten thousand against twenty-five thousand, and we lost only _two hundred_ men, while we walked across their corpses to the sea.”

She gazes into the distance, reliving the memory of that day with a smile on her face. Watching her, Nicolò cannot help but wonder if he will be the same after two thousand years: reveling in the memories of the dead. 

He doubts it. The bodies he remembers do not bring him joy but sorrow and shame.

“We can do more than you can possibly imagine,” Quỳnh tells him. “We have within us a hundred lives, a thousand, maybe more. Think of how many soldiers die in an army. How many of those deaths can we claim, and then rise again? We are not two people, Nicolò. We are a hundred, a thousand. Maybe more. _We. Are. Armies._ Each of us. The question is: what will you do with that army?”

Kairouan

After much careful maneuvering, it is done. Samir Hasfa has agreed to bless Yusuf’s courtship of Khalida. 

There was, he imagines, a great deal of arguing on Mennad’s part. Certainly he looks stormy enough when Yusuf arrives at their home with Hakim and Zeğiga, but he visibly bites his tongue as his father steps forward to greet them. Today must be a good day for Samir: he actually seems to recognize Yusuf and know what is happening around him. He does call Yusuf “Nasir” a couple of times, but everyone politely ignores that, even Mennad. 

After some conversation, Yusuf and Zeğiga are invited to sit in their courtyard, while Hakim goes to rest on a bench near the door, making conversation with the servants of the household. Yusuf makes eye contact with him, warning him to be polite, and Hakim winks in reply. 

Khalida awaits them in the courtyard, seated carefully to be in view through the passageway out to the exterior of the home.. Yusuf helps his jdda to sit nearby then takes a seat across from Khalida. “As-salāmu ʿalayk.”

“Wa ʿalayka s-salām.” Her eyes dart to her father, brother, and grandmother, the latter of whom is discretely steering them out of the passage to the outside of the house. 

Also wary of that audience, Yusuf makes meaningless small talk that is easily interrupted and entirely unobjectionable, all while their potential audience moves further away. The very second that they pass out of earshot, the straining edge of her propriety breaks and Khalida leans forward to whisper: “ _Do you know where Muhammed is_?” 

“Yes, he is well,” Yusuf replies instantly, for it is clear that this question has lived behind her teeth for years. She slumps, clutching the edges of her scarf to her chest. Her fingers are so small and delicate; she is a tiny woman, always has been. “I gave him coin and helped him find passage to Baghdad. I have a letter from him to you right here--”

Zeğiga hisses a warning and they both sit back. It is Sammara, Mennad’s wife. Yusuf does not know her, so he trusts Khalida’s cautious reaction. “Oh, I am sorry,” Sammara says, and appears genuinely embarrassed to have interrupted.

“It is fine, sister,” Yusuf says with a smile. He shifts, using the movement to both face in her direction and pull a weather, square piece of paper from within his thobe. He has done his best to keep it clean and dry, but he has also usually kept it on his actual person or nearby, and he is a traveler by trade. “Are you well?”

“I meant...to bring goat milk to my husband.” She glances uncertainly out the door to where Mennad is gesturing wildly at his father, then at them, then at Zeğiga, who smiles at her placidly, unmoving. 

“He has stepped out, as you see, with Samir.” Yusuf stands, allowing his thobe to shift slightly, just enough to shield Khalida from sight. Dropping his hand to his side, he holds the letter between his fingers and suppresses a smile when he feels it snatched. Their fingertips brush.

“Ah, well, I will...bring it to him?”

“That is well,” Yusuf assures her, and smiles until she leaves to do so. Once she does, he turns and regains his seat. 

Khalida has already unfolded the letter. It is clear she recognizes the handwriting, for she puts her hand to her mouth and tears spill from her eyes. It is not long, only one page; Yusuf has never read it himself despite carrying it for two years in the hope that it might one day find its home. 

“Do you need me to read it?” he asks as gently as possible.

She nods and reluctantly hands it back. “I know my numbers,” she says with a touch of defensiveness. “I learned them, so that I would be able to help you with your business accounts.”

“That is well,” Yusuf says, his heart leaping to hear that she, too, has hoped for a future together. He takes the letter and reads it aloud to her softly, one eye on the doorway where Mennad appears to be making a last-ditch effort to argue with Samir, while Lalla Hasfa leans on her cane. Yusuf can only hope that the elderly lady can steer her husband through this final passage.

When he has finished, Khalida sits for a long moment in silence with her eyes closed. He imagines that there were words in the letter meant only for her ears, just as Farah sent to him. Zeğiga shifts in her seat. “Wipe your cheeks, my child, Mennad looks like he is running out of words to say.”

Khalida gathers herself, using her dark scarf to wipe away the streaks below her eyes. Yusuf carefully tucks the letter away; there will be time to give it to her later. Once they have reassembled themselves, they sit back and regard one another for a moment in silence, bold in their eye contact the way they won’t be again, not until the wedding. 

Khalida has that soft smile at the corner of her mouth. “You are exactly who I have always hoped you to be.”

It breaks Yusuf’s heart to hear. He wants to touch her face, her hand, but they are not married yet and he would never harm her honor this way, especially when they are so close to freeing her from Mennad’s grasp. “I pray that I continue to be that person,” he tells her.

The expected conversation with Samir passes smoothly enough. It’s clear that Lalla Hasfa has managed him well, since he asks for an appropriate dowry, and Hakim emerges from the kitchen with nothing more than a few blushed cheeks and whispered reports that while their servants have plenty of bruises from Mennad, Khalida treats them with nothing but kindness. Yusuf agrees to the dowry and while it is not quite set in stone, it is close enough to please everyone involved. There will be prayers, yet, and supplications from God for guidance. Yusuf has made plenty of those on this subject over the years, and is already certain of his intent. 

He escorts Hakim and Zeğiga back to their estate, his estate, but a restless feeling overtakes his heart and leads him outward from their house down into the ruins of the great university and the mosque. It is mostly unused, now, and wandered by desert winds and spirits, according to the more superstitious among his tribe. 

If there are any spirits hidden among those ruins, they let him pass in peace. By the time Yusuf returns to his family estate, everyone else has long since gone to bed, so he sits on the step outside the main building and examines the night sky. There is no reason that he resists going to bed. There should _be_ no reason that he resists sleep, other than the prospect of dreaming. 

Lately, his dreams overwhelmingly consist of Palermo, or somewhere thereabouts. It seems that the women of their dreams have found--

No. He cannot think of--him. That does not belong here.

It isn’t as though Yusuf dreams of nothing else. Surely there must be other thoughts in his waking mind, but those are the ones he remembers most clearly. He sees a sword--not his shimshar, he notes--in his hands, feels his belly split open, feels himself die, gets back up again. The physical sensations are sharp and clear, as if they were his own, to such an extent that Yusuf wakes clawing at invisible wounds. How he will explain such behavior to his future wife, he does not know. 

Not always is it the one perspective. At least one of the women has found her way to Balarm. He thinks it is the archer, but he is not sure. He wonders at the lack of the other, the tall woman with the fair skin and the axe. Where could she have gone? What could have driven her from her lover’s side? They had seemed so inseparable before, what possible reason could she have for splitting up now? 

Something very much like a single droplet of cold water trickles down Yusuf’s spine.

He shakes himself to escape the sensation, but it persists even in the night’s warmth. He glances around the courtyard; it is as empty as it was before, and he shakes himself again, shifting back on the step in preparation to stand. 

Less than four feet away from him, in the glow of moonlight, stands a woman.

She doesn’t step into the light so much as give the impression that she was there already, unnoticed, summoned by his very fucking thoughts. If they both put their arms out, they would be able to touch fingers but he did not hear her footsteps. In the dim slash of shadow, it takes him a moment to be certain of her features but once he is, he stands slowly, instinctively keeping his hands where she can see them.

“Dost thou speaketh the tongue of Fārsī?” she asks once he’s gained his feet. 

Yusuf squints. “Not that version of it.” Whatever she’s speaking sounds archaic; he can get the jist of it, but he’s got questions that he wants answered, very clearly, in a language that he understands. “Do you speak Greek?” he asks in that language.

Her head tilts to one side. “My Sabir is better, but I don’t speak it where others might hear me.”

“This is my home. Will you come inside?”

She nods her assent and follows him. Everyone else is still abed, and the sensation of walking through the dark with this woman at his back makes a river of cold pour down his spine. He tries not to be obvious about rushing for a flint. 

He leads her to his room, having nowhere else more private, and lights a few other sources of illumination that gradually reveal her. She is tall, almost as tall as he is, and lean as a shimshar. Her uncovered hair hangs down her back in an intricate braid. She wears a plain tunic and trousers, but carries no visible weapon. If he saw her in a crowd he might be equally likely to think her demeanor and clothing strange or his eye might slide right over her--and he has a feeling that which path he took would depend very much on her mood. 

She says, “I am Andromache the Scythian.”

“ _Scythian_.” Holy shit. “Which kingdom of Scythia?”

“The first.”

Yusuf does some quick mental calculations and comes up with a number that is, frankly, somewhat frightening. 

“I don’t actually know your name,” she prompts.

“Forgive me—Yusuf, Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani.” Does she know the first of his name? “May I pour you some tea?” 

Her head cocks. “If you like.”

They sit. He pours her a cup that she does not touch. He pours another for himself and drains half; he wishes that he was not still on his best behavior and had some alcohol in his house. Bismillah that they have not wakened anyone. 

“What has caused this?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Quỳnh has some theories.”

“Quỳnh. The woman from Chini?”

“She isn’t Chinese. She’s from a land south of there. I made the same mistake and she was very angry about it, so I’d suggest not saying that to her face when you meet her.”

Yusuf tips his head in acknowledgment. “And where is she now?” He knows. He...doesn’t want to know. But he wants to hear her side of the matter.

Andromache shifts in place. “She thinks there’s actually two of you. We argued. She left in the night after stabbing a note into the doorway. Bet me a lot of money that she’d find another one of you in Sicilia.”

 _Nicolò._ Even thinking his name hurts. He wakes with it on his lips, the taste of sweat on his tongue and an aching belly. Sometimes, even in the day: a flicker in the corner of his eye, a shadow over his heart that he knows is not cast by his own soul.

Aloud, he says, “There are two of us.”

She mulls that over. “Damn.”

“His name is Nicolò,” Yusuf explains, struggling to keep his voice neutral. “We met in al-Quds...Jerusalem, on opposite sides of a war. When we both kept getting back up again...and then the dreams started. It seemed reasonable to stay together, at least until we left the Levant.”

For a long moment she says nothing, just studies his face in what Yusuf gradually realizes is pure astonishment. What it might take to surprise a person like this...he guesses, “You didn’t think there would be two because that hasn’t happened before.”

“Never,” says a woman who might be older than the written word. “We dreamed of walking through the desert, then crossing the ocean. Kýpros, Hēlioúpοlis, Sicilia--only then you separated and we began seeing two different places. I thought they must be our own memories of Sicilia, but Quỳnh insisted that she could feel him, and that he felt different from you. You met...at your death?”

“Yes. We killed each other, the first time both of us died. Is that unusual?”

“All the others have been spread out by centuries, by continents. The fastest I ever found someone before was two weeks, and only because we happened to be nearby at the time.”

“Are there many others?” 

“No. You, me, Quỳnh...Nicolò.” Her head tilts. “He’s an enemy to you?”

“He _made_ himself my enemy.” But then Yusuf thinks of the way Nicolò had looked at him, his blue-green-grey eyes filled with anguish, the sound of Nicolò’s voice screaming his name. He swallows hard. “I believed that we were becoming friends, but...I was mistaken.”

“Well,” she says, “that either makes things easier or harder.”

“What do you mean?”

“Quỳnh believes that we’re meant to find each other. I wanted to leave you to your lives but she, well. She went to find your...other one. I think she wants to train him.”

“I wish her luck with that.”

“No,” says Andromache, “see, that means that I’m going to train you.”

“It...does?”

“Yes. She’s competitive.”

Yusuf lifts an eyebrow, slowly. 

Andromache’s face does not move, but he definitely catches a twinkle in her eye. “ _We_ are competitive.”

Smoothly she rises to her feet. In his travels, Yusuf has seen sharks move through the waters of Baḥr al-Rūm; the way she moves puts him in mind of their dark shapes gliding through the waves. 

“At dawn tomorrow,” she says, “I will be outside the eastern city gates of whatever you call this city now. Do not be late.”

“Oh, is that decided, then?”

“You have more questions. I have answers, and two horses.” She walks towards the door. 

“Wait,” Yusuf calls, “are you serious? You’re really going to have a competition with this...other woman about who can be the better teacher?”

“Yes, and I do not intend to lose.” With that she sweeps away into the night.

“Damn,” Yusuf says, and drinks both their cups.

A/N

-I have been affectionately referring to Tuccia as Nonni Murder in my head.  
-Vermicelli and spiced white bread are both mentioned on the Medieval Cuisine website: http://www.medievalcuisine.com/


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kairouan // Monte Pellegrino
> 
> -o-
> 
> A mention of child injury in this section, but nothing serious. Canon-typical gruesome but temporary death of a main character. Nicolò is still dealing with some pretty bad mental health issues, but he's starting to get better.

Kairouan

In the light of morning, Yusuf almost manages to talk himself out of meeting Andromache. It would mean opening a door to things he is determined to leave behind for good; but it isn’t as if the dreams have stopped and he has a feeling that if he doesn’t show, she might ride straight up to his door and hammer on it until he comes out.

In the end, the thing that gets the best of him is his own intellectual curiosity.

She meets him exactly where she promised, on the easternmost edge of al-Qayrawān, with two horses. 

Yusuf says, “I have a question, before we begin.”

She lifts her eyebrows.

Yusuf takes a deep breath, bracing himself. “Do you remember when the _wheel_ was invented?” 

Her lips curve upwards to reveal improbably perfect teeth. By God, will he never have another toothache? That might make the whole thing worthwhile. 

“Yes,” she answers.

“How did you get around? I mean, how did you...transport things?”

“We dragged them. Or we carried them. I also remember when most of this country was green, and the desert didn’t exist yet. To the south of here was once a great inland sea larger than any in the world.”

The air goes out of Yusuf, and he slumps, staring at her. “I don’t know how to talk to you,” he admits after a moment.

“So don’t. Get on the fucking horse.”

“Right.” Yusuf eyes the tall horses wearing their minimal saddles and even more minimal bridles. “I take it you were born in a time before stirrups.”

“Be grateful that I’m letting you have a bridle.” She tosses him one then turns and leaps up onto the other horse in a maneuver that Yusuf cannot hope to mimic.

Mounting up is not his most graceful moment, but he manages to lever himself up onto his belly then swing his leg over. Andromache already looks impatient and quickly spurs her horse, riding into the hills to the west of al-Qayrawān. Riding without a proper saddle is difficult at first but then the memory slots into place and he grips with his knees the way Andromache has done in his dreams. 

They ride up onto the narrow foot trails that once were proper roads but have been reclaimed by sand. The horses are both of a local breed, but it’s clear that Andromache knew exactly what to look for when she rented--or bought?--them: they are swift and sure-footed on the dusty paths, with dark coats and short manes. The mane of his horse--

He almost falls off. The mane of his horse is braided tightly and beaded in a very particular way that he recognizes from his dreams. 

He regains his balance quickly but has already fallen behind, and she calls back to him wordlessly, a wild yip on the wind. _The Scythians were horselords_ , he remembers Dowaud telling him, and he digs in hard with his knees to urge his mount onward, though he absolutely refuses to yip back at her like a desert fox. 

_Some_ dignity remains to him.

They ride on across the back of one ridge to the next, mostly letting their mounts set the pace. They are high-bred, energetic creatures and want a challenge; when one slows, the other speeds up to overtake, and soon it becomes its own game...a game that has been played before, Yusuf realizes. 

When finally they draw to a halt at a well on the outskirts of what Yusuf is comfortable traveling in, the first thing he says when he draws within earshot is, “This is Quỳnh’s horse, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Andromache dismounts and lets the bridle fall. Her horse huffs at her, moving about to stretch its legs while she draws water from the well. Yusuf, too, slithers off the side of his horse but is more conscientious about its--no, her--needs, tapping the grass with his foot and only moving towards the well to retrieve water when she raises her nose in that direction. 

The request leads him to Andromache, who is watching. “You know horses,” she comments. 

“I do.”

She smiles, and crosses to pat her horse’s nose the way it wanted to begin with. Yusuf is fairly certain it’s a mare, too, though he doesn’t want to be obvious about checking while Andromache is present. 

“You were called the horselords,” he says to her back. She’s wearing the same trousers and tunic as she did the last time he saw her. Still, he sees no weapons, but he does not doubt for a moment they are present. 

“We were,” she confirms, still with her back to him. She strokes her horse’s forehead. “You seem fairly well-educated,” she says in Latin.

“I am educated enough to suit myself,” he answers in Hebrew, and she turns to actually smile at him. 

“Good,” she says in Sabir, crossing back to the well to draw a waterskin for herself. “You’ve asked me a question today already, but I’ll give you another for free. After that I get to name my price. You are a merchant, does that seem fair?”

“Um. What will be your price?”

“A fight,” she answers. “I have seen some of your style of fighting from the dreams that we share. I’d like to see it personally.”

That same bead of cold sweat traverses Yusuf’s spine. “I don’t want to die again,” he says, and she frowns. “I also don’t want to kill you, but I have a feeling that if we fight, it will very much result in the former.”

“You’re going to have to get over both of those,” she says, “but okay. I won’t kill you. Acceptable?”

“I,” Yusuf says. “Yes, okay.”

She takes a seat on the old stone wall near the well. Once, it was probably the edge of someone’s estate. “Ask your question.”

No pressure. Fortunately, Yusuf has spent the night preparing such questions. “Exactly how many of us have lived through the ages that you could name?”

She tilts her head, smirking. “That I could name? I don’t know the ages of your people, but--myself, Andromache, from six thousand years ago to today, Quỳnh from two thousand years ago to today, Lykon from over a thousand years ago until--I think four hundred years ago. You. Nicolò.”

Yusuf blinks a few times. “Not very many.”

“No.”

“Have you dreamed of others that you did not find?”

“No. That’s more than one question.” She stands, and reaches into her tunic with both hands to draw forth two daggers.

“Shit,” Yusuf says, and pulls out his shimshar. 

It’s a short fight. She ducks his blade, trips him, and rests the point of one knife against his throat.

“You’re accustomed to fighting with two blades,” she comments as she sits back on the stone wall. 

“Yes,” he says. “I have dreamed of Quỳnh, but not of Lykon. Why?”

“He died.” 

“When?” Shit, she already answered that. 

“Four hundred years ago,” she says, and stands.

She takes a blow to her arm without a flinch and puts him on his back, then goes back to sit down. Yusuf tarries, breathing heavily before he can shake it off and stand. “This is not easy for me.”

“I can tell,” she says. “You’ve asked me two question for each fight thus far, did you not notice?”

“I’m a fucking merchant, of course I noticed. I don’t--you want violence.”

He doesn’t dare ask it like a question. She tilts her head to one side. “I don’t _want_ it. But I am accustomed to it.”

“I don’t want to become accustomed to it.” He is shaking very slightly. His right hand throbs, despite not being damaged in the slightest. 

“That’s a problem,” she tells him, “because even if you don’t want to, you will. Even if you don’t seek it out, it will find you. At first I lived as everyone else in my village lived, just longer and more repetitive. But if you haven’t noticed, a lot of people live short lives, some because of disease but many because of a stray arrow or a random bandit or an angry tribesman. Sooner or later, you will become accustomed to killing and being killed.”

Yusuf breathes, slowly. He stands and walks away from her. They are in a grassy area in the crux of several hillsides. He says, “I don’t want it.”

“You don’t have a choice,” she says behind him. “It has chosen you.”

He starts to turn and she is close. She darts in and he parries, strikes away her blow, ducks, rolls, and comes up several feet away to find her in midair leaping after him. 

The only answer is to bring up his shimshar and let her impale herself. He does not. 

Somehow she lands like a panther, the weight and speed of her cushioned by her own nimble hands. Her knives rest against his collarbones. 

After a few moments he says, “I never asked a question.”

“Fine,” she says, straightening away. “Ask one now.”

“How do I make it stop?” 

“You can’t. You know that already, I don’t know why you bothered. Quỳnh and I have tried in every way you can think of. Ask another question.”

“I don’t--no.” He shakes. 

When he finally gathers himself to face her, Andromache is watching him with a frown on her face. After a moment she crosses to her horse. “No more fighting,” she says to his relief. “We ride.”

They are barely three horse strides out of the oasis when she twists around and seems to fall out of the saddle, then hits both heels against the ground and bounces up from there, using the momentum of the blow to fling herself back up into the saddle facing backwards. Watching, Yusuf winces then attempts his own reversal.

He winds up on his back. For about a minute he stares up at the sky until Andromache brings both their horses back into sight. “Try again,” she says. 

The moment of contemplation allows him the space to imagine. He almost gets it this time: grasps the saddle and gets his legs in the air but doesn’t quite have the momentum to get himself over.

“Ow,” he says as eight hooves trample back into view. 

“Again.”

It takes two more tries and then he is riding backward on a galloping horse. “Fuck me,” Yusuf says, then grabs the saddle and twists off the other side. 

One of his toes cracks as his feet connect with the ground, but he still manages to spring back up into the saddle, facing forward this time. Andromache makes another one of those high, yipping cries, and Yusuf dearly hopes that he is not imagining the tone of approval. When he glances over she grabs the saddle and dangles over the side of the horse in a maneuver that hides her completely from the opposite side; someone looking at the horse would see no rider. That one, at least, Yusuf knows, though he’s never attempted it without stirrups. 

Well, no time like the present. 

It takes a great deal of hand and arm strength, but he manages. Their horses race along side by side, while Andromache and Yusuf dangle between, almost bumping shoulders.

Andromache reaches across and grabs his saddle. “Switch!” 

“Are you fucking serious?” Yusuf yells over the pounding hooves just feet away from their heads. She makes no response except to shift under him, lengthening her hold on her saddle. At least she’ll hit the ground first and cushion his fall. Yusuf flails out and manages to grab her saddle just above her hand. 

They both almost fall and Yusuf gets dragged for some ways, hanging onto the side of her saddle; but through sheer stubborn force of will, he manages to pull himself up. It helps that her horse, by now very put out at the lopsided weight, has slowed to a trot. 

Andomache sits calmly astride the other horse, smirking down at him. “Not bad.”

“How many questions does that earn me?” Yusuf asks as he shakes out his aching hands. He thinks he might have broken his toe, but it’s already stopped hurting. 

“Let’s say three.” She turns her mount’s head back the way they came but gives them a leisurely pace. 

They spend the morning this way. Once Yusuf shakes off the strangeness of their meeting, it is not too terribly different from his childhood lessons with Dowaud, though Andromache shows far less concern with his physical safety, or her own. Yusuf breaks another toe, has his arm slashed open on a rock after a nasty fall, and heals from it all almost instantly. Neither inspire the same unsteadiness in him as before and he breathes deeply, watching the sky lighten.

After they take a rest to break fast (Andromache) and pray (Yusuf) they return to combat, though Andromache does not engage him directly. Yusuf shows her the forms that he knows; she finds a branch almost exactly the weight of his shimshar and makes him fight two-handed, which truly does feel more natural to him. 

In return, she tells Yusuf about the horse lords of old, the Roman emperors she assassinated, the limits of their healing--nearly none, save decapitation, and _that_ makes for quite a story--and the network of allies that she and Quỳnh have accumulated, some of whom Yusuf already knows. 

“Ibrahim?” he exclaims. “Of Cypros? Wait, why am I surprised? Of course he is. Does he know about me?”

“Not yet. I was going to write him a letter after I’d found you.”

“I visited him on my journey from al-Quds. I am somewhat comforted to know that he isn’t _that_ good at lying.”

She cocks her head, considering him. “You are well-traveled and well-connected.”

“I’m a merchant, I have to be. That sounds like an assessment.”

“It is. Quỳnh believes that each of us possesses unique talents. She is an archer--she can fight at close range, of course, but she is best with a bow. I never cared much for arrows or spears. Lykon--”

Here she pauses and gazes across the scrubland around them. “Lykon brought us joy,” she finally says. “He was light and happiness, even in the middle of a battle. He fought with a spear and was one of the strongest men I’ve ever met but his true gift was the way he could find something to smile about everywhere he went.”

Yusuf sits on a rock near her, his forearms propped on his hands. “Tell me more about him?”

Reluctance twists her statuesque features, but after a moment she speaks: “We were lucky, with him...or maybe Quỳnh is right and we were meant to find one another. She and I had taken work as caravan escorts in the west of Indoi, which took us to the warfront against the Macedonians. I trust you know the war I mean?” she asks, and Yusuf nods. Iskander the Conqueror. “Lykon had been conscripted into the war during their southern campaigns, and this was how we found him so quickly. When he died, we were near enough that we recognized the world around him, and found him within half a moon. 

“He never wore armor in battle. Not even a shirt, went about with his chest bare as if daring the world to harm him. It did. Again and again, it cut him down, but he always came back up. Until he didn’t anymore. We weren’t ready, when it happened. He was so young.”

“He was almost a thousand years old,” Yusuf points out.

“Young _to me_ ,” she counters, and he can’t argue with that. Her face, as she looks back out across the dusty trails towards the sand dune beyond, is set in stone; Dowaud had taught Yusuf about the stoics of Greece, and he thinks that perhaps she studied their philosophy. Then he wonders if they based their philosophy on _her_ and falls into another spiral of bewilderment. 

She is ancient. Older than the stones of Balarm, older than the tombs of al-Qāhirah. It dizzies him to even contemplate. 

He says, “I speak Arabic, Greek, Sabir, Hebrew, some Latin, and the tongue of the Nri kingdom. You’ve seen me fight with shimshar and ride horseback. But I don’t...I do not exist simply to be an asset to you. I have a life here. I am living my life and I have no intentions of leaving it to serve your needs.”

She hears him. She stands. “Come. We ride back to your city.”

When they part at the gates, he asks, “Will you be near? I might think of more questions.”

Andromache smirks at him. “And here I thought you did not want to meet me at all.” Yusuf flinches as the reasons for his earlier reluctance pour back in, and her smile drops away. She says, “I will be here every seventh morning until I tell you otherwise. Now get off my wife’s horse.”

Monte Pellegrino

Usually, coming back to life is a gasp. Lightning sparks in Nicolò’s whole body, not dissimilar to the sensation of sleeping on his arm except filling every limb. There is frequently pain as his body heals whatever damage was enough to kill him, but only momentarily. 

This time is different: he wakes and is in agony.

His legs are still broken--he landed feet-first and his feet, legs, and hips are all shattered. He’d died quickly, but not before he’d felt his gut and chest split open like overinflated bladders on impact with the ground. Everywhere, he feels pops and cracks as his body repairs itself, and he screams through his teeth, tasting blood. When he peels open his eyes, there is a sizable piece of blood-soaked bone lying nearby. He thinks it might have been part of his skull.

“Shhh,” says a voice above him. Quỳnh strokes his head. “That fall was over two hundred feet, give yourself time to heal. For the record, you still lost,” she adds, ruthless as always.

Enough of Nicolò’s right arm has healed that he can work his hand out to the side and make a rude gesture at her. She had been pursuing him through the mountains, in a game adapted from what the children play after their chores, chasing each other in the fallow fields and through the edges of the forest. Nicolò had scrambled up a rocky path in search of a new hiding place from which to shoot arrows and when she had pursued him too fast and he had found no way forward except a cliff, he had jumped. He’d never died from a fall before and he had expected to heal faster than this.

Quỳnh laughs at him but keeps stroking his head. That hurts a little, too, but he does not object.

Eventually he heals enough to stand and they find their way back to the village in the fading light of day, stopping along the way to wash themselves in a cold mountain spring. Their training now mostly occurs up here, removed from the sight of the children after one of them had imitated a particular sweep of sword and badly cut her younger brother. Some of them are too young to know the difference between blows that wound and those that kill, and while this has not been a problem before when they were trained by their parents, watching two unkillable warriors regularly hack each other to death has somewhat muddied the waters. 

Quỳnh’s approach to training is a combination of practical skills such as how to string a shortbow and fashion his own arrows, and randomly springing at him from out of the shadows to stab him in the eyes, the latter being something they do _not_ wish to encourage in the children. 

Once he got past his initial fear, Nicolò likes being around the children, especially the littles. The older ones understand too much and see the ways that he is frayed and strange, but the littles are beautifully ignorant. Several babies that had toddled at their mother’s skirts develop over the winter months into troublesome creatures who race about on unsteady legs, sticking their hands into places that hands should not go. Initially, Tuccia’s people regarded him and Quỳnh with awe and some fear, but once the mothers cottoned onto his willingness to mind their little ones, they were all too happy to forget their initial reservations, and Nicolò regularly finds himself spending several hours a day bent over, walking slowly with a child gripping his thumbs as they explore the village.

Then there are days when he cannot bear to look at the children, cannot touch his sword in their presence or do anything except stagger away into the forest that surrounds their village. On those days, no one else comes near him except Quỳnh. She says nothing but always sits near him and when he can finally move under the weight of the shadow around his heart she lets him put his head against her shoulder. 

Her presence, as prickly and unpredictable as it can be, has become an unexpected balm. She does not seem to mind it when Nicolò studies her for stretches of time that others find uncomfortable. Frequently she will stare right back. 

She told Tuccia that he was her kin. Nicolò had thought it a convenient lie, but in these quiet moments he begins to understand that she truly means it. 

He has never had family before, at least not that he truly remembers. He does not know to be someone’s family. He tries bringing her food and she smiles; he sharpens her blades and she scolds him for using the wrong oil. Gradually he learns what she likes and dislikes, and does more of the former, unless she has stabbed him recently. On those days he throws her favorite sword in the privy.

That makes her laugh. She is forever contradictory. 

The rainy months of spring pass this way until the days lengthen into summer. Nicolò helps Tuccia and her family plant asparagus, beans, garlic, and basil. Tuccia frequently demands his assistance in the kitchen; he cannot tell if she does so because she has noticed his difficulties with food or because he is taller than almost anyone else here and can easily reach the bundles of last year’s basil that she has hung above the fireplace to dry. 

One day, when it is raining particularly hard, Nicolò climbs the stairs to the armory. He has been at Tuccia’s side all morning baking bread and actually feels full, a rare accomplishment. Even his finicky mouth could not turn down bread fresh from the oven. He carries a loaf with him, intended for Quỳnh.

He finds her seated near the window. They have made a nest of blankets for themselves among the weapons and armor. Since almost the first night, Quỳnh has insisted on sleeping directly against his back with no thought for propriety or even an explanation beyond, “I miss Andromache.” Nicolò had immediately been struck with sick dread; but she has never reached for him as one would for a missing lover. He would not deny her the use of his body, of course, but he is relieved all the same. 

The roof frequently leaks on them, and part of the floor has caved in, affording them little privacy when Tuccia wakes early in the morning and talks to herself over breakfast, but the heat of the fire below keeps them warm and the companionship, once he truly believed she did not want to fuck him, is pleasant enough. Nicolò has never slept well, excepting that handful of days in Sicilia with Yusuf, and he has no right to miss Yusuf. 

Now, he brings Quỳnh a loaf of bread only to find her reading a sheath of papers. It takes Nicolò a moment to recognize them: they are the scraps that Tuccia’s daughter Margarita retrieved from her job working as a laundress for a nearby monastery. Every page has been marred beyond use in some way, either by spilled ink or a tear through the middle or the imprint of a cat’s paw. Nicolò, who had guarded the Biblio di Santa Giusta d’Albaro like a hawk, could only wince at the sight of them. Tuccia had asked him if he might put the pages in order and piece together a Bible of their own out of the mess. 

Right now, Quỳnh has that clumsy bundle of paper held up to the light, and Nicolò struggles with the conflicting impulses to snatch it away from the damp window, or to pitch it out of the window altogether. Looking down, he focuses on laying out a cloth for the bread. 

Quỳnh reads aloud, slowly, “ _Fecitque Deus duo magna luminaria luminare maius ut praeesset diei et luminare minus ut praeesset nocti et stellas_.” She pauses and frowns. “Oh, the sun and the moon.” 

Nicolò says nothing but looks at the bread arranged on the cloth in front of him, torn into small pieces as if prepared for a Eucharist feast. The body of Christ. 

Sheets of paper rustle together. “Is this your belief, little mouse? I know you do not like to speak of it--”

“Then why do you speak of it?”

“Because it matters to you. I thought at first that you would leave this behind with your mortal life, but you haven’t. Why?”

Why? He does not know how to explain it to her. He is unkillable, untouchable, but so is God. To admit it still matters is to say that he still wants--he makes himself think it. He still wants to be loved. Well, what use is that? What difference do his wants or beliefs matter to the world? “It doesn’t matter,” he tells her, watching his hands tear the pieces of bread into smaller pieces. 

She sighs. “You still believe in your god--okay. I don’t understand it, but you won’t talk about it.”

“Because it doesn’t matter,” Nicolò gasps. It _hurts_ , but he will repeat it until he believes it, too.

For a long time she sits next to him, saying nothing as he tears the bread into smaller and smaller pieces. Eventually she starts to eat the pieces. They are still warm. 

“I love you,” she says, and after six months together he actually might believe it. She reaches out to hold his cheek in her hand. Nicolò stills. “And so it does matter, to me, because we are family. I know you have seen Andromache with him in your dreams--don’t look away, mouse, you aren’t a coward! I will not allow it. You will have to learn to live with him, even if only in your dreams, and that means you must learn to live with whatever you think is your god. I know they are not separate. You cannot lie to me. Look at me.

“I was meant to find you first, because you are mine in a way that you will be no other’s. You and I will always rise the day with a weapon in hand. The people who we were meant to find are the ones who may walk before us to strike down the enemies but we will come after to slit the throats of the fallen and to save those who can be made our friends. They scream so that we can whisper. Ours is the kindness that kills. We will love with all the patience in the world and kill without mercy, because that is who we are.

“But I cannot replace this for you. I thought, at first, that we could--we will always be your family, Nicolò. But we cannot help you with this.”

“There is nothing to help.” Nicolò understands his purpose very well: he was made to serve. He only lacks the courage to accept that role, something that he grimly thinks can only come with time. 

Lucky, then, that he has all the time in the world.

“Thank you,” he says to Quỳnh, who frowns at him. “But you are right, this is not something that...I must make my own peace with this. I thank you all the same.”

She does not seem happy but settles at his side and begins to eat. Nicolò closes his eyes and thinks, _Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi, per--_

A dagger buries itself in his forearm.

“Fuck!” Nicolò shouts, his eyes slamming open. “Oh, fuck you!”

That familiar shark grin spreads over Quỳnh’s face as she rolls to her feet and dances backwards. “Ooo, you curse now, little mouse! We are making progress.”

Exhaling through his nose, Nicolò grimly digs the knife out of his forearm. “You gave me a knife,” he points out, and Quỳnh laughs as she unsheathes her sword. 

Kairouan

In the midst of such important developments in his personal life, Yusuf looks up one day and realizes it’s been...several weeks, maybe, since he has seen to his business affairs.

He cringes inwardly and rides down to al-Mahdīyah.

The docks and all surrounding areas are abuzz with merchants. A haul of grain large enough to fill the hull of a ship brings commerce not just to those who sell it, but to the bakeries and the clothmongers and other merchants who quickly set up their stalls around where the grain is sold.The laborers suddenly find cheaper and more plentiful food, and use that energy to delivery clay to the potters. Like a plant wilted in the sun that springs back to life after rain, the entire city seems livelier as he rides through it, and Yusuf cannot help but take pride in that.

He finds Abu by the docks. The moment the man claps eyes on him, Abu puts both hands on his hips. “Do you have any idea how many times I could have swindled you in the last two moons?”

“You sound so offended, but you are the one accusing yourself of hypothetical crimes.”

“I am offended by your trust! I thought you a smarter man and here we are with most the grain sold while you were off courting! I could be halfway to Constantinople by now.”

“Does it comfort you at all to know that the harbor master is under my employ and would have ordered you sunk if you had tried?”

Abu narrows his eyes, very obviously trying to tell if Yusuf is bluffing. He’s not. “A little,” Abu admits. “Well, come on, I’ve rented a room.”

When he says _room_ , what he really means is that Alma, who came with him, has taken over the inn and all of its functions, though she still speaks only the most broken Arabic. She is even more terrifyingly pregnant than the last time Yusuf saw her, but does not seem at all slowed by her own bulk--or, even more terrifying, she _has been_ , in which case, he dreads meeting her in a non-pregnant state.

Abu leads him upstairs to a balcony overlooking the inner courtyard, which one of his older children is very busily and very noisily weeding. “I hope you won’t condemn me for drinking wine,” Abu comments as he digs a cork out of a bottle. 

“Only if you don’t condemn me for not joining you,” Yusuf says. “Mennad has his servants following me these days, looking for some last-ditch excuse to break the courtship.”

Eyeing him, Abu puts the cork back in the bottle. “So you’ve noticed them, have you? And you’re sure that’s who they serve?”

“Hakim recognized them from the Hasfa household. Why, who did you think they were?”

Abu sits back, stroking his beard and glancing over the courtyard. “I hear things. Noor, my wife in Sicilia--”

“You did marry them? Both of them?”

“Of course I did. Well, one of them--the other went back to live with her father’s family. Noor has sent me two letters. She tells me that the Caliphate is making inroads to Sicilia again, mostly by trying to inspire the faithful there to rise up.”

“Wallah.” Yusuf rubs his temples. “Are you fucking kidding me, Abu? You’ve been there, you know perfectly well--”

“I know perfectly well that Christian bandits attacked my farm.”

“On orders from a Seljuk Turk!”

“That’s not what I’ve been telling people.” When Yusuf only stared at him in confused silence, Abu elaborated. “At the last days of summer, a man came to me. He spoke with an eastern accent and had gold embroidered in his thobe. He had heard the story about you saving my life and wanted to hear it all again--you’re welcome, by the way, I know that helped you win your love.”

Yusuf sits forward. “What did the man want?”

“He wanted me to tell everyone the story of murderous Christian bandits butchering the faithful on my farm. Don’t look at me like that, it’s not even a lie. And yes, I know that a war is the last thing Sicilia needs--Wallah, you think you can spend two weeks there and tell me something I don’t know about that island? The Normaunds are barbarians and drunkards, but they aren’t fools: they know commerce is more important than converting a few and slaughtering the rest. But that kind of temperance doesn’t inspire anyone to fight. The Caliphate lost al-Quds: they need it back, but to take it they need to block the Franks from having a launching point in the Baḥr al-Rūm, and with that Hebrew bin Mufarrij still sitting daintily on the isle of Cypros, they _need_ to retake Sicilia.”

“And you’re going to help them for, what, a handful of coin? Is that worth all the lives that will be lost?”

“Wallah, you _are_ stupid. Think, you ignorant whoreson--you’re the local hero, you’re full of stories about the faithful getting slaughtered by vile Franks at al-Quds. Why the fuck did they not come to _you_?”

At first Yusuf wants to retort that he wouldn’t have agreed to the game, no matter what their price. But then he catches himself. The Caliphate stood to lose very little with the attempt. The fact that they went to Abu instead of him means that they have a different purpose in mind for him. 

Abu lifts his eyebrows, exhaling hard through his nose. He casts his eyes around the inn and Yusuf follows his gaze; sees the way, now, that Abu’s family has taken over; sees the way every door is guarded and every room is deliberately filled by no one but his own family. For a moment Yusuf tenses; if Abu wanted to, he could hold Yusuf here quite easily, could kill him without anyone raising a fuss, but his child is in the courtyard below them, within Yusuf’s reach if he simply goes over the side of the balcony. That is deliberate, too.

They sit for a few minutes in silence. Then Yusuf says, “I want you to know, I was going to invite you to my wedding. But you’re going to be sick that day, aren’t you?”

“Bad water. I’ll have the shits all morning.”

“How long will it take for the rest of the grain to sell?”

Abu considers it, rubbing his knuckles against his beard. “Another moon, maybe more? I’m not promising anything, by the way. The second I see the flash of a blade, I’ll risk the harbor master.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to stay.” Yusuf glances down into the courtyard at the child digging up clumps of dirt. Abu brought his children and pregnant wife as a gesture of good faith, as a silent promise to Yusuf that he wouldn’t cut and run. Now they are in danger simply by knowing Yusuf. “I’ll pay you double your rate if you can be ready to sail the day after my wedding.”

-o-

The Hasfa family estate is by nature a beautiful piece of land, but now it is cleaned, pruned, and scrubbed to a shine. The wedding festivities will begin here, with Khalida surrounded by the women of her family. 

Long has Yusuf looked forward to this, and now a shadow has been cast over his joy. 

Khalida meets him in the garden, accompanied by a cousin, Aaliyah, who titters and blushes at Yusuf and hangs off Khalida’s shoulder. It takes charm and careful maneuvering to peel her away: she is young, barely seventeen, but takes her duties as chaperone very seriously. Only by asking her to demonstrate her skill with henna designs is Yusuf able to move her out of earshot; she perches on a bench with brush and paper, drawing with the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth.

Despite everything, Yusuf cannot help but smile. “She is very sweet.”

“She is one of my favorites,” Khalida confides. “Do not tell any of the others.”

“I would not dream of doing so.” Yusuf draws a deep breath. “I must beg your forgiveness. I have asked your father if we could move the date of our wedding forward. A fire has struck the isle of Crete, burning much of their timber, and while unfortunate for them, it creates opportunity for me. In order to take advantage of that opportunity--”

“You need to hasten your purchases of timber in Sicilia, particularly olive and oak, and transport them to the island when the rebuilding process begins.” She pauses, tilting her head. “I worried you were here to tell me that we needed to postpone.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Your horsewoman.”

It takes Yusuf a moment. He’s only met Andromache twice and the idea that someone might think them lovers is--Wallah, he struggles not to laugh. “No. No, she is not my lover. She might kill me to even hear that someone thought her so.” It’s not an exaggeration, especially when Andromache knows he would rise again. “She is a traveler who I met by chance, who is training me in ancient horseback techniques. I imagine Mennad put that in your ear?”

“Yes.” She sighs, shrugging. “When all I hear is his voice, it is difficult to keep the truth in my mind.”

Muhammed said something very similar, once. Yusuf sets his jaw. “I will need to be ready to travel very shortly after the wedding. I would be well-pleased if you were ready to leave with me on that voyage. I know it will mean leaving home very soon after we are married--but it would be important for both of us that you were not left behind.”

Khalida’s eyes roam over his face, studying his expression, then flick away from side to side. Yusuf does not turn but can only guess that she has just checked the watchers who Mennad has placed upon her. Yusuf can also only trust that they, too, are out of earshot.

She says, “I will be ready.” When little Aaliyah bounds back over to show off her designs, they both put on their smiles.

A/N  
-”Indoi” is a Greek term for India around the time of Alexander the Great.  
-Quỳnh is reading from the book of Genesis.  
-In addition to tattoos, the amazigh people have a long tradition of stunning henna body art. https://injtrii.wordpress.com/2018/12/16/traditions-to-keep/  
-And a quick point of clarification: Yusuf is aznagi, which is a tribe in the Maghreb. The phrase “amazigh” wouldn’t have existed in that time period, as it became a term for the group of tribes to which aznagi eventually belonged.  
-Many thanks to gaytransmanbooker on Tumblr for a consult about horses, especially which breeds would have been found in the Maghreb around this time period that might have appealed to Andromache, The Original Horse Girl. I grew up around horses but it was years ago and limited to the Western US.  
-Endless thanks to lady-writes on Tumblr for the sensitivity read and history lessons on African languages.  
-Aaaand thanks to itsme-imhere on Tumblr for the sensitivity read for a Vietnamese character.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kairouan // Genoa
> 
> -o-
> 
> Warnings for brief child endangerment, Nicolo's continued eating disorder, domestic abuse, and canon-typical violence.

Kairouan

In the waning months of summer, Andromache meets him outside the eastern gate at their customary time. 

“You’re getting married,” she says.

Yusuf leaps up onto Tiên, patting her neck in greeting. By now he has unbraided her mane several times in order to comb it out, a task that took as much time for him to learn as the process of mounting without stirrups. His family owns several horses but have always paid for someone else to manage their care. 

When he confessed as much to Andromache, she had simply stared at him in silence for several minutes then dismounted and ordered him to figure out how to remove Tiên’s saddle immediately.

She had guided him through brushing, cleaning hooves, and recognizing basic maladies. Yusuf had only gotten kicked twice and now thoroughly enjoys re-braiding Tiên’s hair in the style that Quỳnh prefers. 

“I am,” he confirms. The whole countryside has gotten involved, one way or another, and he isn’t surprised that even Andromache has heard the news. They’ve been meeting weekly for two moons and he still has absolutely no idea where she sleeps at night or how she spends her time away from him, though he has his suspicions. There have been some horse races held along the coast in recent months, the results of which have been scandalous enough to earn talk among the city proper. 

She says nothing but leads him along the outer walls of the city. In most places they aren’t even walls, just stones that their horses could walk over, but Andromache follows them deftly nonetheless. Yusuf casts a few glances around; they do not usually ride this close to the city, but there is no one around yet this early. He wonders if they, too, have become accustomed to the comings and goings of this strange woman. 

She leads him to a strange dip in a hillside, what he thinks might have once been a spring. He wonders if she remembers when it was a spring. Enough residual moisture is here that the trees grow high above them, and when Tiên crests the top of the foot trail Yusuf can’t help reaching above him to trail his hands through the canopy of leaves above.

Andomache takes no such enjoyment in her surroundings. He wonders what she has seen in her life, what things are left to surprise her. Him, for one.

They dismount and sit near one another in the shaded area, while their horses tear at the grass. He says, “You don’t approve.”

“It isn’t a question of whether or not I approve. It’s a bad idea.”

“Why?”

She shoots him an incredulous look. “You’re fucking _immortal_ , that’s why. Some day she will grow old, whoever she is, and you will not. What will you tell her then?”

Yusuf has been trying not to think about it, but under Andromache’s steady gaze, he must. “I suppose...I will find a way to die, then, and move on. By then she will have my money, and hopefully we will have found...she will be cared for, along with whatever children we have.”

“You will have no children,” Andromache tells him. “I had children before I became immortal. After? I have had many lovers, and no children. Quỳnh had none. Lykon had children before he became immortal, and none after. Whatever makes us eternal takes from us the ability to make others of our own.”

It is a blow--not necessarily to him, but from the future that Yusuf hoped to make for Khalida, for his people. Someone will need to be the person who brings grain to al-Mahdīyah; Yusuf had thought it would be his own child...but there are many ways to call someone his child. “Then we shall take in children and make them our own.”

Still she shakes her head at him. “I know what you are doing.”

“Do you. How?”

“Because I’ve done it. For almost three thousand years I was alone in the world. My family died, one by one, my children lived and died, my grandchildren lived and died, until I became more of a legend than anyone they would call their own family. I was worshipped as a god, revered, feared...but everywhere I went, I was alone. And then, one day--a dream. This woman I did not know who I watched die and come back to life. Suddenly I was not the only one in the world.

“I didn’t...handle it well. I’d spent so long watching everyone around me grow old and die that the idea of someone else being like me was...unsettling. For a long time I didn’t want to believe it. I pretended that she didn’t exist. For two hundred years we went on this way, until _she_ began looking for _me_. She came north from the land of her people--I don’t know how she figured out where I was but she headed straight in my direction. At the time, it was enemy territory for her: she fought and died a thousand times against a thousand opponents, and yet still she wouldn’t stop.

“I ran. I’m not proud of it. I hid from her as best I could, and that’s not exactly something that comes naturally to me, but I managed for another, I don’t know, two decades. Then. I dreamed of her walking into the desert. She stayed there and she died, and she died, and she _died_ , and she died, and she died.”

The weight of her words lands between them like one stone after the other. Yusuf, watching Andromache’s face, wonders at this other woman with her endless determination.

“She’s stubborn.” Her lips curled upwards, gentle and fond. “It took me four years to find her out there, even with all of the clues she left behind. She made a _game_ of it, made me work to find her after trying for so long. I’m not saying that I didn’t deserve it at that point. But once I did find her…

“I don’t know what to say, here, to make you understand what I need you to understand. When I asked what you were going to do, I didn’t mean your wife--I meant _you_. You need us. Sooner or later, your mortal family will die, and you will be alone. I lived that way for thousands of years and I didn’t understand what or who I truly was until I found Quỳnh in that desert. I don’t believe in any gods, not since I was worshipped as one myself, but _she_ made me believe that we are--all of us--intended to be together, by whatever force of the world that you want to believe in. How else do you explain the dreams of each other? I’ve seen him, too, training with Quỳnh. She’s never gonna go easy on him,” she adds wryly.

“I can tell.” In his dreams, Nicolò has died with enough alarming frequency that Yusuf feels grateful he wound up with Andromache as a tutor instead of Quỳnh, though it seems to have been exactly what Nicolò needed. He wonders if Andromache is exactly what he has needed, as well.

He has seen the same things as Andromache, but there are other dreams, too, when Nicolò is still and quiet. He makes food for himself, now: he has to, the demands of Quỳnh’s training don’t allow him to starve himself anymore in pursuit of closeness to God--or perhaps he’s really given up trying to feel God at all. He rarely prays anymore. Yusuf should be pleased: Nicolò chased salvation across the ocean to al-Quds along with the rest of the Franks.

He isn’t, though. 

Somewhere in Sicilia, Nicolò eats and he carefully thinks of nothing. In that blankness Yusuf feels the shape of Nicolò’s heart, held like a cold, featureless stone inside of himself. He can feel that, from this distance, and it makes him ache.

He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want any of it, he wants this life with Khalida--but without the gift of immortality, he would have been another body in al-Quds, like so many others who fought for the Fatimid Caliphate, and he never would have made his way home, he never would have brought grain to his people, he never would have met--

Andromache is watching him. Yusuf makes himself meet her eye and ask the question that he has resisted for so long: “Why me?”

“No,” she says immediately. “You will ask that for years and there’s no answer I have for you, but that’s not the question you want to ask me right now.”

Yusuf grits his teeth. “Why _him_?”

A Frank, a Genoese, even a Christian is painful to him. Yusuf has known plenty of Christians in his time and most of them just wanted to do business and live their lives; but from the north and west there have come these new ones who hate anything that is different from them on sight, who assume that everyone who doesn’t worship exactly their way must be heathens. For fuck’s sake, Yusuf knows the name of ʿĪsā, acknowledges him as a great prophet, how the fuck has this hatred grown between their people?

And it is not fair, has not been fair from the beginning, to blame that hatred on Nicolò when there are princes and viziers dedicated to stoking its flames, and Nicolò with his starving heart is a victim of that hatred, too.

That does not stop Yusuf from clutching at the sky in bewildered frustration. _Why him? Why does the thought of him still stir my heart, body, and mind more than my wife, who I have known for years?_

“I don’t know that, either,” Andomache says, “but there’s never been two at once before. There was me, for four thousand years, and then there was Quỳnh, and we were alone together for another, I don’t know, thousand years, and then Lykon. It’s been a thousand years since then. I don’t know if you’re coming faster now or if I’m getting older, but of all the places and the people in the entire world, you died together and found each other, together, at the same time. The sheer fucking improbability of that...if I didn’t already believe that some force in the world means for us to find one another, I would now, because of the two of you.”

 _And you have walked away from it all_ She does not say it, but Yusuf hears the accusation all the same. All things in Heaven and Earth are made by God’s hands and all is according to His will; he placed Yusuf and Nicolò in the same place for a reason, and Yusuf has turned away from it. He is still turning his face away from it. 

“He made himself my enemy,” Yusuf tells her. “He...tried to convert me, he _lied_ to me, he killed me, many times. You call us family but I--we are not that.”

“I believe you. That does not change the fact that he exists and he will exist long after everything you love in this place is dust. He will be there long after the dust is blown to the winds and that does make him yours in a way nothing else will ever be, except for me and Quỳnh. You can either face that, or you can run from it, as I did, until I couldn’t run anymore. Sooner or later it will catch up to you, Yusuf. You will be alone and want something other than dust.”

She turns, then, gathering up the reins of both horses. He knows without being told that this leaving is different. “Where are you going?” he asks.

“I was right,” she says without looking over her shoulder. “We should have left the two of you alone. Or maybe we were right to come--but either way, we should go away now. He exists, Yusuf, and he is one of us. If he owes you something, you go and take it from him yourself.”

She mounts her horse, whose name he has never learned, and rides away, taking Tiên with her. Yusuf knows without asking that it will be a long time before he sees her again.

Genoa

The first time Nicolò shows Quỳnh a Genoese crossbow, she screams. She flings her hands up in the air and stares in the direction of the bolt, which has passed clean through a man’s throat into the wall behind him, as if she has just seen a holy miracle.

Unfortunately they are trying to infiltrate a slave holding at the time and her scream alerts the guards to their location. 

They die several times each in the taking of the building, one of many in the outlying Certosa markets of Genoa. Before they’ve even untied all of the wretched prisoners inside, she is at his side demanding to be shown how to use the crossbow.

“It works best when there are two,” he explains, as he spins the handcrank to span the bow, then sets the bolt in place and straightens. Far away along the hillside, a man is running in their direction--one of the outlying guards, probably. Nicolò sights him, then pauses and hands over the bow. 

Quỳnh takes her time, clearly accustomed to sighting nearer to herself, but eventually shoots the man directly in his gut. She whoops, holding the crossbow above her in triumph then spinning to face Nicolò. “I want one!” 

They get her one, though it takes another few weeks to do so. She complains much about the time it takes to span the crossbow, but still cheers each time either of them fire a bolt, amazed at the distance it travels and its accuracy. “Vãi, if you had ten thousand of these and five thousand men to shoot them, you could conquer the world!” 

“I pray that you are wrong,” Nicolò tells her.

They spend some time in Nicolò’s homeland, killing Guglielmo Embriaco, a few of his closest murderers, and other people who took part in the slaughter at Jerusalem. Not so many as to arouse the countryside and never in the same way, twice. Quỳnh suggests killing the Pope but Nicolò, even fallen and cast out by God, cannot bring himself to go that far. 

Not yet, anyway. 

Now that he has some idea of what to do with a sword, Quỳnh teaches him to use a garrote, an axe, and an odd throwing weapon that consists of two smooth white balls extended on hemp rope, whose name Quỳnh does not remember. It makes a whirring noise when she swings it in the air over her head and nearly cracks Nicolò’s head open after she wraps it around his neck. 

When he shakes off the injury, he uses the rope as a garrote while she chokes on her own laughter. 

They adapt their chasing game to cityscapes, springing between rooftops and evading guards as they work their way back down the peninsula, and occasionally joining in what battles they find. Someone is always fighting someone else--Pisans versus Gaetans, Gaetans versus Normaunds, Normaunds versus everyone. It is always the same fight: someone wants someone else’s land and riches. 

Nicolò thinks of Jerusalem, the beauty of the city as Yusuf described it, and wonders if it was really that base at heart. 

Everywhere these petty territory squabbles touch, Quỳnh and Nicolò find the true victims of war. Mothers begging for mercy, towns sickened by bodies left to rot in their well water, children left wandering. “Is this how you spend your time?” Nicolò asks one night over the campfire. 

She laughs. “No, no. Sometimes we fight, but we also travel, and climb mountains to reach the stars. But you seemed like you had some anger, little mouse, that you needed to work out.”

That night, Nicolò lies awake, considering that. Anger had never been a sin for which he needed to repent: he had never spoken harshly to his parish staff, even when they let rats eat the holy bread, and even the most heinous of offenses confessed to him had never moved him to acts of violence. 

Nor does it please him to imagine himself as a holy warrior, called by God to do violence in His name. That is far too familiar and nothing that he wants for himself. 

Eventually he falls asleep. He dreams of warm, dry air and a lantern-filled night, a full belly and a joyful heart. He dreams of his hand joining with that of a beautiful woman; her fingers are delicate and covered with intricate designs in dark red. The echo of a name-- _Khalida_. There are people all around him. His family. He is embraced again and again. He is loved.

_Wake up, wake up, please wake up--_

He looks over Khalida’s shoulder for a moment, just a moment, and sees himself in a mirror hung on the wall. His dark gaze flickers, a line drawing between his brows, as he looks into his own eyes, just for a moment, and sees Nicolò there.

Nicolò wakes with an indrawn breath. 

In the morning he knows without asking that Quỳnh had the same dream from the way she steals glances at his face. For once, though, she displays tact and does not immediately barge into the conversation. 

There is no reason for her to worry so but Nicolò cannot quite bring himself to speak of it.

He has no right to hurt. Yusuf was never his. And even if he were, they parted almost a year ago. It is good that Yusuf has found happiness. He deserves it. 

The day is--strange. Nicolò doesn’t think it’s all in his head, either. The weather alternates between sunshine and rain, with bursts of rainbows in between. They are traveling along the coast on foot, edging around a political upheaval of some kind. Logically Nicolò knows this part of the sea well enough, but dark grey clouds hang low, obscuring the horizon while far, far below them at the foot of the bluffs, waves crash against a rocky shore. A bad day to be at sea, but a beautiful one. Pausing in a hilly patch of sunlight, Nicolò catches Quỳnh’s eye and she grins at him, bright and fierce. How many surreal days like this has she seen, shining iridescent among the clouds? What wonders of the world await him? For the first time, Nicolò begins to hope that this is not, in fact, Hell.

The distant pounding of hooves makes them both drop to the ground, though they cannot do much to hide on their sunlit hillside. Two riders appear through the field to their left, leaning low in their saddles and swinging their swords while they curse and bellow. Normaunds, likely hunting some kind of animal—or so Nicolò thinks at first.

Then something small on two legs darts across the dirt road between the fields.

Quỳnh is already running, but Nicolò is taller and overtakes her quickly. As he descends he journeys back into dark, driving rain and is quickly soaked. The first rider is too far ahead of him and crosses into the field in pursuit of his quarry; Nicolò catches up to the second, though, and slams against the horse’s side. 

The mount screams in surprise, dancing sideways, and the Normaund shouts as well. Dropping, Nicolò rolls between the horse’s moving legs to evade a sword slash and comes up on the other side with his hand gripping the saddle strap. Heaving, he twists it sideways. 

The Normaund yelps as he falls into the mud and Quỳnh leaps upon him with her eyes wild and her teeth bared, knives at the ready. Turning, Nicolò races on the narrow path of crushed wheat that leads through the field, drawing his shortsword as he goes. 

There is a low, abandoned stone building on the far side of the field, half-caved in and likely once used as a shelter for fieldworkers before this war-torn land was left empty. The second Normaund’s horse is outside, restlessly pawing at the ground. It rears back in fright as Nicolò draws near. The inside of the building is dark but he sees sharp movement--someone grabbing, the flash of a blade being pulled back. 

Nicolò screams, sending his voice ahead of himself, and the dark figure swings around. It’s only a momentary flinch: the sword comes up and Nicolò does not hesitate to fling himself at it, not stopping even as it cuts into his side. 

They crash to the stone floor of the hovel, thrashing in a puddle of water that has accumulated there. In the corner of his eye Nicolò sees a small child tumble back against the stone wall by the door. He has but a moment and then all of his mind and body are preoccupied with killing the man under him. 

He is a large man, tall and heavyset with hearty living. Whatever has brought him to foreign lands to kill little children, it was not hunger. He drags his sword out of Nicolò’s ribcage, with crackles and draws back together; he cannot get another good angle, though, and now Nicolò has him by the throat. 

Nicolò’s sword is shorter. He sets the point against the Normaund’s eyesocket and drives it in, panting around a collapsed lung as he does so. 

At some point he must either die or black out, because he wakes facedown on the Normaund’s chest. Lurching upright, he looks around him. The child is--not by the wall anymore. Is nowhere in sight. Where is the child. What--

Someone whistles nearby. Swinging around, Nicolò finds Quỳnh leaning against the half-broken front door, standing over the still-twitching body of another man. She meets his eyes then jerks her chin across the room. 

There is a low, wide bed, half-collapsed on one side. Nicolò starts to kneel then catches himself leans his sword against the wall, and wipes his hands off on his clothes as best he can. Once he has, he goes first to his knees, then his belly on the damp floor. 

It is dark in the small house, and darker still underneath the bed. A pale, oval face stares back at him. 

“ _Buongiorno_ ,” he murmurs. “It’s all right, little one. You are safe, now.”

It takes much coaxing for the child--a girl--to reemerge. She is barefoot and shivering in the cold, probably nine or ten years of age. She stole from the Normaund camp. She is very sorry. Her family’s house is nearby, she was trying to make it home. 

Her arms wind around his neck and Nicolò closes his eyes against the swell of emotion inside of him. He stands, feeling her delicate limbs stretch with the shift of gravity; instinctively he puts an arm under her legs to support her weight. Her breath whistles in his ear. _This, this_ , he thinks, _this is what God made me to be. A blade to strike down the cruel and an open hand to the innocent. Anger, yes, but kindness, too._

Holding the girl with one arm, he retrieves his sword with the other. When he turns again, Quỳnh is still watching him. Whatever she sees in his face makes her smile and nod before she leads them out of the house back into the rain.

-o-

It is not a great surprise when they reach the end of the peninsula, so close to Sicilia that Nicolò could almost throw a stone and strike the far shore, and Quỳnh tells him that she is leaving him. Well, first she swings a staff at his head. Nicolò parries with the frying pan, stabs her to death, wipes off the knife, and resumes cutting beets. He’s found that cooking his own food cuts down on the amount of gagging he does later. 

“It has been a year,” Quỳnh announces after they are done eating. “It’s time you were on your own for a bit, Nico.”

“I thought the plan was to lure Andromache here.”

“It was. But that was before I had the full story between you and your Yusuf.”

“There isn’t any story to tell.” Not anymore, anyway. He had been right, before: he’d led Yusuf astray with his selfishness, but not in the way he’d thought. Yusuf had never been his to love. 

Quỳnh points her knife at him. It’s got a chunk of potato at the end, but Nicolò tenses all the same, ready to dodge; after a moment she only pops the potato into her mouth. “That is why I’m leaving. I can’t bear to sit around here and watch this horse shit. Bad enough I have to dream it. No, you’re going to have to figure this out on your own, little mouse.”

In Nicolò’s opinion there’s nothing else to figure out, but he knows better than to argue. They sleep one more night curled up together tight. Nicolò has grown accustomed to sleeping with Quỳnh as his side, her arms wrapped around him; he wonders how he’s going to get to sleep on his own again.

In the morning she loads her bags with matter-of-fact precision. Nicolò gives her most of their provisions. “Where will you go?” he asks.

“Hm. No. You’ll have to figure that out from your dreams. Ooo, I should have done that before. But you know so little about the world, you wouldn’t recognize the landmarks.”

“I know a little.”

She snorts at him, hoisting her pack onto her shoulders and binding it across her chest. “You’re like a little baby. Ha! A mouse baby. But you’ll learn. You had a good teacher, eh?”

“Well, do you have any parting words of wisdom, great teacher?”

“Hm.” She squints at the sun, then at the ocean. “I admit I never got past Genesis in your holy book, but I like the story of Adam and Eve. Two people, alone in the world. Of course they ate the apple together. How could they not? God had denied them already, for if God truly loved them why would He not have made them equal to Him? Why did he need them to be lesser? But then I think, we are all lesser than someone. We are all younger, or weaker, or less knowledgeable, unless we are lucky enough to be made equal. Even Eve was made of Adam. But then she became his equal by eating the apple first, and guiding his teeth. What a rare thing it must be to be made wholly, perfectly equal to another creature in this world.”

She says this and then squints at him as if expecting a reaction. As if he could possibly have a response. When he only stares, she shakes her head and holds her arms out to him. Nicolò embraces her, pressing his nose into her braided hair and giving into his tears. His big sister. He loves her so. It will be such a comfort to see her in his dreams and know that she is out there in the world. In that way he will never truly be alone, because she will be seeing him, too.

“Goodbye, Nico,” she says in a small, clogged voice against his chest. “I’ll see you in a hundred years or so.”

Kairouan

The house they have built is simple enough. Yusuf worried that it would be seen as ostentatious just to have a second compound built on his land, but he didn’t want to crowd Hakim and Zeğiga; thus, the house that will be for him and Khalida is smaller and simpler, set overlooking the ruins. Its square walls are white sandstone with blue painted edges and a tiered courtyard in its center. Around it is space for other buildings, but they will still have to travel back to the house beneath the tree in order to draw water from its well, a distance of about fifteen minutes on foot. 

That, he hopes, demonstrates enough humility not to draw comment.

Their families have already delivered those personal belongings that they have chosen to take with them. There are not many: such arrangements are much less imperative to make when they can simply travel a few minutes back to their family estates. Still, the ceremony is meaningful--plus, as Khalida had confided under her breath during the first day of their wedding celebration, “I don’t want to go home again if Mennad is there.”

Yusuf had winced, glancing over at Mennad Hasfa. In the joyous crowd of revelers dancing and singing around the two of them, Mennad alone had been glaring daggers. “We could break with tradition. The contract is already signed, I could take you home now--”

“No. He’d use it as an excuse to argue that the marriage is null.” She squeezes his arm. “I can survive one more night. But after that...”

After that, Khalida will be free from her brother’s grasp, and Yusuf has every intention of immediately spiriting her across the sea. No one else knows their plans to leave immediately, not even Zeğiga; Yusuf will have to beg her forgiveness after this, but Yusuf wants to waste no time in getting Khalida as far away from Mennad as possible, not to mention reuniting her with Muhammed. Getting a message to Baghdad will take time: Yusuf would have done it already but the last thing he wants is for Mennad to intercept the message and discover Muhammed’s location. 

Mennad might lack Yusuf’s reach and wealth but he is an influential merchant in his own right, and his hatred of Yusuf is more than strong enough to make up for the lack. 

Fortunately, the weeklong wedding celebration is finally drawing to a close. All that remains now is for Yusuf to travel to the Hasfa estate and join Khalida in a procession to their home together. Ironically, the procession will travel through the city on a winding path, when the journey straight from the Hasfa estate to the house would have been much shorter. Tradition, however, must be observed. Yusuf wants absolutely no thread out of place to grant Mennad a handhold by which to unravel everything he has so carefully built.

So he drags himself from bed early in the morning even though every fiber of his being rebels against it so that he can go down to the mosque and pray with the community. Prayer, in Yusuf’s opinion, should never be a demonstrative thing: to wear his piety like a decorative gem goes against the very idea of having faith at all. Just this once, though, he needs to be _seen_ praying. 

Of course people want to talk to him afterwards, but Yusuf manages to get away with the perfect excuse that he must dress and prepare. So does half of the city, too. He makes his way home. It is far more crowded than usual: his uncle Mahmoud and Mahmoud’s two wives have been staying with them, which means Hakim has been sleeping outside in one of several temporary homes designated for various cousins and other more distant relatives. Yusuf would have objected, still remembering how eager his uncle was to abandon Hakim, but Hakim forbade him from kicking up a fuss.

In the absence of his own father, Mahmoud commands most of the household through wedding rituals. Never once has he bothered to visit before other than to criticize Yusuf’s business decisions, but now he is invaluable and at least he shows proper deference to Zeğiga, who mostly keeps to her courtyard. Yusuf cannot help feeling a little frustrated with her: she automatically defers to Mahmoud the moment he appears, even when Yusuf can _feel_ her disagreement. 

Fortunately she does not disagree with his opinions about how Yusuf should conduct his wedding itself, only how much Khalida should bring to the marriage. It helps that his opinions run exactly counter to those that Khalida’s asshole brother Mennad has consistently expressed, so Yusuf can happily fling the two at one another and sit back to enjoy the aftermath without getting involved. 

Today, at least, is harmonious. Mahmoud bought Yusuf his wedding clothes; thankfully they are not too ostentatious. Once Yusuf attended a Christian service in Constantinople. The bride and groom both wore so much gold in their clothes that they clacked as they walked. At the time Yusuf had been awestruck and jealous, until his father pulled him aside and warned him that such displays of wealth would have him scorned in his home country. 

Still, Yusuf cannot help but think longingly of elaborate clothing as he pulls on the plain thobe--embroidered with elaborate designs along the collar and wrists, albeit in dark thread--and loose trousers underneath. Khalida will be more bedecked and have the option to change into more clothes as the day progresses, but it is not becoming for a man to do the same. He cannot help but wish it were.

They set out. It is not entirely family: Abdul is here as well, smiling and waving as a representative of the local government, blessing the occasion and likely looking for a popularity boost, himself. Yusuf looks for Hakim in the procession but cannot find him--deliberately so, most likely. Yusuf refuses to be ashamed of his cousin, but he can understand why Hakim does not desire to walk at the head of the column, visible to all. Zeğiga is there, her head twinkling with silver sovereigns and held high. She accepts the arm that Yusuf offers to her. 

His younger cousins precede them on the path, cheering and throwing flower petals at first then simply walking ahead when Mahmoud, walking on Zeğiga’s other side, admonishes them. It’s a long walk and they need to conserve their ammunition for when they are closer to their target. Yusuf smiles at them all whenever they glance in his direction; he doesn’t actually know most of their names, but they skitter around like so many cats. 

As the procession continues, someone begins to sing. According to Mahmoud this is traditional, but Yusuf would enjoy it regardless. Others take up the song, so it must be something known to others who have attended weddings; it’s a long, repetitive song about everything that a groom and a wife should bring each other on the wedding day. Yusuf finds himself running through the list and remembering everything that he had escorted to the house on the ridge that awaits him tonight.

“Stop,” Zeğiga tells him. 

“I’m literally just walking.”

“You think too much, my sweet boy. You always have. One day your brain will get tired and die in the dirt and then what will you do?”

“Well, I expect you will come out and poke me with your cane until I get up.” Yusuf glances behind them. “Do you want a donkey to ride on?”

He’s arranged for one to be just behind them, of course. Tradition dictates that they walk but there are some among them who will not make that journey. Yusuf still can’t find Hakim among the long, trailing crowd behind them. They have entered a winding gulley between two hillsides which marks the last low point before the rise between here and the Hasfa estate; from there they will pass by the house prepared for Yusuf and Khalida to live in, before they proceed along the ridge to the Hasfa estate.

“Not yet. For now I want to walk beside my silly boy. I am very proud of you, do you know that? You have always been what you needed to be.”

Facing front, Yusuf swallows. “I know that, jdda.”

“I only hope that you are _happy_. I will not lie and say that is all I have ever desired for you. I know the weight of responsibility that lies on your shoulders, to your family, to your tribe, to your community, but I dearly hope that it is not enough to drag you down into misery, and that I am taking you somewhere that will bring you joy.”

Yusuf allows his feet to slow to a halt so that he may look her in the eye. “You do, jdda.’

“You must not lie to me.” Her gaze is unrelenting. “I know how unhappy you have been. Have I not heard you at night? I know.”

Wincing, Yusuf casts a swift glance around them. No one seems to have noticed their momentary pause in the procession except Mahmoud, who frowns in their direction. “I _will_ be happy,” he tells her. He must be. 

She frowns at him. Yusuf struggles to find the words to pacify her--he must, it is far too late to equivocate and he has worked too hard towards this end to not follow it to its conclusion--but as he stands there he struggles to find the words.

As if growing up out of this hesitation, he begins to hear the drum of hoofbeats. 

They come over the southern hillside, trilling on the wind with their swords and bows already upraised. They do not come for anything except to kill. Yusuf pushes Zeğiga behind him as screaming erupts all around them. He grabs the standard of a young boy near him: apparently that was his family banner, but Yusuf doesn’t know it in the slightest. Swinging the standard like a spar, he meets the first horseman head on and knocks him from the saddle. The pole in his hands breaks in half with a crack. 

Other horsemen follow. There is so much screaming on all sides. Yusuf swings the broken, jagged pole in both hands at another horseman, then another, then there is a swordman on the ground striking at him. Yusuf parries, crouched low. The broken pole is too long and he cannot swing it fast enough to avoid a blow to one arm so he tucks the pole against his side and twists, trying to block that way. 

It works for a few moments, and then it doesn’t. The swordsman gets in a lucky strike across his chest and Yusuf staggers, sucking in breath around the agony splitting him open. The sword flashes in sunlight as it descends, pulls back, and plunges forward into his body.

He wakes up and Zeğiga is standing just over him. A sword bursts through her back, pulls back, then plunges in again. Her ancient body spasms. 

Yusuf screams around a mouthful of his own blood and claws his way up her leg to lunge at her attacker. The only thing visible on the man is his eyes, which stare in frozen horror as Yusuf seizes the sword and rips it out of his nerveless hands. 

That man falls. There is more screaming. In the thrash of bodies Yusuf loses his way: he is outside the gates of al-Quds and grasping at the arrow shaft in his own chest. 

Instinctively he looks up for Nicolò. 

Instead there are horsemen bearing down on him and Yusuf crouches low, ducking under the fall of a sword then leaping up onto the horse’s back with a move that would have made Andromache proud. The horseman shouts in alarm but is quickly cut from the saddle, tumbling sideways. Grabbing the reins, Yusuf wheels the horse around. There are bodies moving in every direction, bodies on the ground, and for a moment he cannot fucking tell from whence the danger is coming, but then another rider lurches into his vision and all he can think of is fighting.

He has not fought on horseback much. Andromache taught him to ride but kept their blades from clashing. She’d told him--she’d warned him. Why did he not listen.

His horse is skittish, dancing away too much for him to match the other swordsman. When it rears up, only the tight clench of his knees keeps him in the saddle; he fights desperately but the best he can hope to do is distract their attackers until the others can get away before--

Something impacts hard with his back, a sharp, spiking pain.

He knows well what it feels like to be shot with an arrow. Nicolò had shot him twice, once in the side and then through the chest. 

He wakes on the ground. Hooves dance on his chest, cracking it in. 

He wakes on the ground. A horse is nearby. He grabs the sword on the ground near him and slashes at the horse’s leg. It rears up, crying out in pain. Yusuf rolls onto his side and staggers to his feet. Someone behind him shouts in alarm. He stabs up into the horse rider’s gut, seizing his robes and taking a clumsy slash to his arm in order to drag him out of the saddle. He falls to the ground and Yusuf bends down to stab him. 

The horse bolts. There are other horses but their riders steer them away from him. Yusuf tracks them, twisting to keep them in sight. There are three, at first racing in different directions but then veering off to converge up the hill from him. They gather there, staring down at Yusuf where he crouches in the gulley. They call to one another in fearful voices before they wheel around and gallop over the hillside and out of his side. 

Only then does he slump and gasp for breath. His body aches all over. His ribs crack. Somewhere nearby, a baby is crying.

Bodies lie along the path around him, either flung there or rolled back down by the steep hillsides. Yusuf stumbles to one, turns it over--a cousin, he thinks, whose name escapes him. Another: Hakim. He sobs and presses his forehead to Hakim’s lifeless shoulder. 

Staggering back up, he shoves past the bodies of two attackers to unearth that of Zeğiga. She is limp and stares up at the sky above them, unseeing. Yusuf screams, wordless and desolate, as he heaves her body up into his arms, rocking back and forth with the force of his grief. She was his jdda. She took care of him when his father was away on business and darkness fell over his mother’s heart. She cannot be dead. She cannot be. This cannot be. He shakes her but she only flops in his arms. She will never touch his hair again with her wrinkled hands. Her courtyard will grow wild. 

He is lost without her. He is lost. He is lost. What is he without all of these people to tie him in place? This has been his home, the one place where he could come home and be known in full, to lay down his burdens, without them he is empty, he is nothing, he will blow away on the wind. He screams and sobs and cannot think beyond his despair.

Something strikes the side of his head. Yusuf twitches, broken for a moment from his lament. Another rock strikes the side of his face. He looks up.

There are children up the hill from him, opposite to where the riders fled. His second cousins, maybe? Despite his own grief he tries to smile at them but they look terrified and launch another volley of rocks that he ducks underneath. 

“Demon!” one of them shouts. “Get away from her!” 

Their mothers crowd close, dragging them back with frightened eyes. There is a whole crowd up the hill from him--his family. No, not his family. People related to him by blood. His uncle Mahmoud is up there. They stare down at him. 

Slowly Yusuf clambers to his feet. He seeks out any familiar faces among the crowd above him. There is Gwafa, but Tasfut is not at his side; he looks frightened.

Turning, Yusuf walks along the dirt path between the two hillsides. There’s a sword in his hand; he must have picked it up automatically. He shoves it away from himself and keeps walking. His steps are as unsteady as his limbs. The shadows of his body precede him and Yusuf watches them move for a long, long time, until he looks up and realizes that he has emerged from the gulley onto the ridge between his estate and the Hasfa estate. The sun just barely peeks over the horizon and he stands for a long time watching the last sliver of it disappear over the horizon, the sky turning from orange to dusk around him.

He itches to go home but the rest of the household is there--so many people who have already thrown stones. There is the other house, though--the one for him and Khalida. Likely no one will be there right now. He’ll be able to rest, at least, and hopefully find something to wear other than his blood-soaked wedding garments.

Thus decided, he turns his feet in that direction. The night is cold, autumn growing long in the desert air. His wounds ache with each step, but gradually that sensation lessens until he is running easily through the hilly scrubland, as though he hasn’t been dealt mortal blows multiple times this awful night. Somewhere in the dark he hears hooves and darts off the road, cutting across land.

At last he climbs the ridge up to where the house sits, halfway between the Hasfa estate and his own. Below him the ruins of the universities and other administrative buildings stretch out like a graveyard of bones in the moonlight. 

As he rounds the corner of the house, movement ahead of him makes him stop. 

It’s Khalida, standing in the moonlight. She wears dark clothes and clutches a small parcel to her. When she sees Yusuf she freezes, too, eyes going round, before she drops the parcel with a clatter and races towards him with her arms outstretched.

He catches her up off the ground and squeezes her tight, his eyes clenched shut.

“You’re alive,” she sobs. “They said you were dead, Abdul said he saw you run through--”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It was _Mennad_. He told me so. Somehow he learned the Caliphate was angry with you and he sent them a message. He _boasted_ about it to me.”

Yusuf’s arms tighten and his breath goes thin. Of fucking course. He had wondered why in God’s name the Caliphate still had it out for him--Mennad. “What did he tell you?”

“He promised them your fortune. He told me I would help him get it for their war in Sicilia. I told him I’d rather be a bandit’s whore and he locked me in my room, so I crawled out onto the roof and jumped into a tree to get away.”

Putting her down, Yusuf takes her by the shoulders. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” she says, but lifts a hand to the side of her face. 

He hustles her into the house, what should have been their house. Once Mennad realizes she is gone this place will not be safe, but for now Yusuf risks lighting an oil lamp to examine Khalida. She has a swollen cheek in the shape of Mennad’s knuckles and cuts on her hands from scrambling down the tree, not to mention a few twigs in her hair and wounds on her bare feet. 

Yusuf tends to all of these as best he can. The house is full of their personal belongings but absent many more practical items. Already his mind is scrambling ahead to the next step: with Khalida here, that is one great obstacle overcome, but now he must find them some way of escaping this place, and somewhere to go. Without Khalida, Mennad won’t be able to lay his hands on Yusuf’s coin by any valid means, but he’s likely made some very big promises to some very powerful people in order to arrange this. He will be desperate. And if Abdul _was_ somehow involved--or, more likely, could be threatened into bending--then likely the whole city has already heard. They will need to--

His thoughts derail when Khalida’s hand lands on his chest. She is staring at him, at--at his tunic. At the slashes in it, the sprays of dried blood. Where he was run through. The glimpses of healed skin that show from underneath the torn fabric. 

She looks at him with fear blossoming in her eyes. Yusuf’s breath stutters in his throat.

When he finds it again, he says, “I need to tell you something.”

A/N

-I have no historical sources for saying that the primary slave markets in Genoa (of which there were many around this time period) were in Certosa. I simply looked at a map and saw a river coming from the north (which is where most of the slaves being sold in this time period and place would have come from).  
-Traditional Tunisian weddings last several days and are community events. When Nicolò dreams of the wedding, that was one of the first days of the wedding.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kairouan // Limassol
> 
> -o-
> 
> Warnings for canon-typical violence.

Kairouan

The telling of it all takes precious time that they do not have, but once he begins Yusuf cannot stop. He digs out the pages that he bundled together, the drawings of Andromache and Quỳnh, and lays it all out before Khalida. He describes the sensation of dying like falling backwards down a dark tunnel and that of coming back to life like the jerk of a sleeper whose body is not ready to rest. 

Through it all, she asks few questions. She does protest when he takes up a knife to knick his own finger but then falls silent when he shows her how quickly his skin closes over the wound. 

Reaching out, she takes his hand in hers, turning it over and over. “I feel like I must be going mad,” she says, but speaks calmly enough. “How many times have you died?”

“I...am not sure.” Yusuf thinks for a moment. “Ten? Maybe more?”

“And your family--they saw you die, earlier?”

“Yes.” Zeğiga. Hakim. He has not spoken it aloud yet. He cannot. Even thinking of it makes Yusuf feel like he is dissolving. 

From the look on Khalida’s face, she can guess perfectly well; but praise to God, she does not ask. “These others--will they help us?”

“I don’t know. They will be able to see that I am in danger, through the dreams that we share but--Andromache guessed that trouble would find me soon enough, and from the way she spoke, she expected me to handle it myself. There are others, though, who we can turn to.” He straightens, squeezing her fingers as a plan begins to form in his mind. “There’s a man named Ibrahim on the island of Cypros. He has sworn to provide assistance and shelter to Andromache, and she said that she would be letting him know about me. Whatever else is between us, please know that I want most of all your safety, and if you let me I will see us both away from here. All else can unfold from there as it may.”

Still, Khalida frowns. She looks over the drawings that Yusuf has laid upon the table. “Andromache,” she says, and touches a page showing Andromache on horseback. “Quỳnh.” She touches a sketch of Quỳnh laughing, her hair sweaty and disheveled. Her face is somewhat less distinct, having only ever been glimpsed in dreams. 

Khalida looks at him and asks, “Where is Nicolò?”

“We...did not part under the best of circumstances.” Yusuf skimmed over their time in Sicilia greatly. “He was preoccupied with his faith, to the point that he tried to convert me against my will. I do not wish to remember him.”

It sounds true. It is true. Yet Khalida looks at him, clearly disbelieving for the first time in this whole strange conversation. 

Rising, she crosses to the chest underneath the window. A sinking sensation overtakes Yusuf’s entire body, but he does not try to stop her as she retrieves his sketchbook. He had told her, when they spoke of their home and what it would be like, that she could look so long as she did not tell anyone of his portraits. She must have, judging from the way her fingers deftly turn the pages as she walks back to rejoin him. When she looks up, Yusuf does her the courtesy of meeting her eye, though he begs silently for her not to inflict this cut.

Relentless, she puts the book down on the table, holding it open. This places her at Yusuf’s side and he hesitantly curls a hand around her arm; blessedly, she does not pull away.

On the pages are...fragments, really. An eye, hands, the profile of a distinctly Frankish nose, a man’s head and shoulder from behind with his face turned away, a pair of eyes again, too pale to be anyone from their part of the world. If Yusuf even attempted to breathe life into this jumble, he could never succeed; and yet they live in him still, no matter how he has tried to pluck them out.

“This is Nicolò,” Khalida says. It is not a question.

Yusuf looks away. Wallah, he would have felt less shame if she’d encountered nude sketches of her own brother; but Muhammed’s face, as dear as it once was to him, is not the one that he sees when he closes his eyes. To still carry such feeling for a man who could be part of such monstrous things--he cannot justify it to himself. How can he ever justify it to her?

His hand slides from her elbow, or she moves away. Yusuf cannot bear to guess which it is.

“You lied to me,” she says. 

“I did not! I--Khalida, I left all of this behind me. Nicolò is--he was my lover, yes, but you are the one I--”

“You think I care about that?” She paces away from him in the flickering darkness then flings her arms out. “I don’t care who else you love, so long as you treat me with respect! This life you imagined for us...me growing old while you stayed eternally young? Did you hope that I simply would not notice? Or that I would grow senile like my father, and forget?”

“No!” 

“Then _what_?”

For once in his life Yusuf has no ready answer. He feels like his insides are being pulled out of him bit by bit, as that life he imagined for himself, for them, unravels around him.

“I tried not to think about it,” he admits. When her expression turns incredulous, he looks away in shame. “I couldn’t. It was too terrible. To know that everything I’d ever planned or hoped for...all of it was dust, blown away, and the only thing I had left was--”

He has been trying not to look but with the inevitability of a stone returning to earth, his gaze lands on the fragments of Nicolò. They are sharp enough to slash him to ribbons. 

Outside, a horse nickers. 

Their eyes fly to one another and Yusuf hastens to extinguish the lamp. 

Fortunately, even the brief time they have spent in this house works in their favor. Together they slip along the wall into the kitchen, where Yusuf arms himself with a second knife and tucks Khalida into a corner. 

The men, when they come, are armed with shortswords but have no torches and blunder through the house, cursing loudly as they kick at the belongings that Yusuf and Khalida had so carefully selected for their home together. Cursing turns to screams as Yusuf launches himself at them in the dark, stabbing with his small knives. Luckily they do not wear armor and one gives up easily enough, clutching his wounds and moaning as he tries to flee the house. 

The second actually puts up a fight and they hack at each other in the dark, both feeling their way to each other’s bodies with the tips and edges of their blades.

It stops hurting after the first few cuts. Powered by the strength of adrenaline and rage, Yusuf keeps going until his opponent drops his sword with a clatter, until he goes to the floor, until he stops making a sound at all.

Either he dies or he loses his way in the dark, because the next thing he remembers is Khalida fearfully whispering his name from the kitchen. The smell of blood is everywhere. He tries to wipe his nose and only succeeds in spreading it around. “I am here.”

He does his best to clean himself off before he relights the lamp. She still stares at him in horror.

They change clothes quickly. Yusuf digs out his saif and straps it to his waist. Making to take the sword of his attacker, he pauses as the light falls over the man’s face. He is not aznagi, nor is he one of the nomadic tribesmen who attacked Yusuf earlier. The make of his clothes is expensive. 

A Caliphate assassin. And not alone, either--when they go outside, they find his fellow facedown in the dirt, having bled to death. Yusuf strips the second man of his cloak and wraps it around Khalida’s shoulders.

“Listen to me,” he says. “You must go to al-Mahdīyah. Can you ride a horse?”

“Of course I can fucking ride a horse, where are you going?”

“They will be looking for me on the roads and in the cities. I will draw them away so that you can slip through. No, you must not argue with me, Khalida! Listen to me, there is a man named Abu staying in the green hotel near the docks of al-Mahdīyah. Go to him, tell him--tell him this is my price for his life: that he take you to Cypros. There you will find a man named Ibrahim, ask in the docks for him and they will know. He will help you, until I can make my way there myself. You must do this, Khalida, _please_.”

He manages to get her up on one of the horses, which she handles adeptly enough. With the hood of the cloak pulled high, no moonlight falls on her face and Yusuf can only pray, pray to a God who let Hakim and Zeğiga die today, that she is recognized neither as herself nor as a vulnerable woman alone in the dark. Whom Yusuf has made even more vulnerable. 

“I am sorry,” he gasps around the grief in his throat. Their hands entangle on the bridle of the horse. “Khalida. I am so sorry.”

When she has gone, Yusuf mounts the other horse and turns it towards the Hasfa estate. 

If he was kind to himself, he would lie and say that he meant the apology for what he has done; but there is no space for Yusuf in kindness now. There is only a rising scream, a howling animal that knows the truth.

He meant the apology for what he’s _going_ to do.

-o-

The ride is a matter of minutes. After his lessons with Andromache, Yusuf knows how to move a horse silently through the landscape, his eyes sharp for rocks that--if struck by an errant hoof--might give away his position with a spark. 

He actually passes by the first guards without even noticing: they are posted on the road to the Hasfa house but have laid down their weapons in favor of sitting near the fire and talking quietly. Drawing his horse to a halt, Yusuf considers letting them live; then he goes back and cuts both their throats before either of them can cry out. 

A few of the others put up more fight but not enough to satisfy Yusuf. He wants them to stop him, wants to fling himself on their weapons, but they quail before him. Mennad, at least, fights--he must known that Yusuf was coming, from the screams if nothing else--but he spent more time on his religious studies than with a blade in hand. A bookish child, forever trailing after Yusuf until he learned to be ashamed of that interest. 

Now Yusuf bears him to the ground with a sword in Mennad’s gut and pins him there. “I saw it, you know,” he tells Mennad. Mennad stabs him in the shoulder and arm, deep punctures that Yusuf barely feels. His mild tone does not change. “I always felt your eyes on me. If you had spoken your interest out loud, I might have considered your suit--but I have never had time for cowards who beat those weaker than themselves. And now, here we are,” he continues through his teeth as Mennad’s knife finds his chest. “Poisoned by something that you hated about me rather than admitting to yourself.”

Mennad’s pupils have started to lose their consistency, going flat and black. Leaning close, Yusuf whispers, “If God spits you back out then I will be waiting here for you.”

It doesn’t take long for Mennad to die, but by then Yusuf himself has spilled just as much blood, and he slips sideways to lie on the floor beside Mennad, a pool forming around them. Their blood runs together and Yusuf’s lips curl at the insult.

He wakes and immediately sucks in a breath that is half blood, which sets him to coughing. Someone nearby makes a choking noise and his attention snaps in that direction even as he struggles to fill his lungs with air.

It’s Sammara, Mennad’s wife. She stands on the far side of the room, a dark shape in the grey, pre-dawn light. Scattered in the room before her are the bodies of two guards and Mennad himself, staring blankly at the ceiling with the shortsword still buried in his gut.

For a moment--a moment that will haunt him for the rest of his long, long life--Yusuf wavers, shifting his grip on the shimshar as he climbs back to his feet. Its blade drips blood on the floor. 

The animal in him howls. It takes terrible effort to seize it by the throat and push it down. He draws a shuddering breath and says, “As-salāmu ʿalayk, my sister.”

She makes no noise, still frozen against. There are bruises on her face, too; Yusuf imagines that Mennad usually tried to aim elsewhere. He takes a few more moments to make sure his grip on the animal is strong before he pulls out the shortsword and crosses the room to her. Sammara makes no sound but closes her eyes as he approaches.

When he is a few feet away, Yusuf stops and says softly, “You have nothing to fear from me, Sammara, I swear by the name of the prophet, praise be upon him. But you know why I’m here, don’t you? You know what Mennad has done to me.”

Her eyes open. She nods once, jerkily. 

“There are others who he allied with against me, to do this.” He turns his body away from her and slides the shortsword back into its sheath still slick with blood. There is no point in cleaning the blade. “I would have you carry a message to them, sister, to all those who have wronged me. When anyone asks you what happened here, tell them this: that God commands justice and fair dealing, and I am his faithful servant in this. They have butchered my kin in the desert like animals and thus shall I butcher them. They covet that which is mine and for that they will pay with their lives. What they have done to the weakest and most helpless I shall do to the strongest and most powerful among them, and it does not matter where they go or how fast they run. I have forever. I am eternal. If I find them tomorrow then so shall it be. If I find them withered and old in their beds, then I will pass through their doorways and steal them from under Death’s hand, for Death can never claim me. Will you tell them this for me, sister?”

She nods again, once.

“Peace be with you always,” Yusuf says, and leaves her there widowed and alone, passing out through the doorway with the first spear of the morning sun over the horizon.

Somewhere behind him in the house, Sammara begins screaming.

Limassol

Making his way to Cypros is a great deal easier than Nicolò had expected. Crusaders are still banned from the island and he half-expects to have his throat cut multiple times on his journey from the docks of Lemesós to Ibrahim’s hotel. When first he came here, he was not blind to the watchers--mostly children--who raced ahead to announce his arrival, and his time with Quỳnh has made it easier to trace the path those spies take, leading up the hill to the great domed building above the city. 

No one cuts his throat, though, so after a few hours of politely hanging about the docks, Nicolò makes his way on the dirt path out of town that zig-zags up the cliff to Ibrahim’s hotel. 

He arrives in the early afternoon, while the meuzzin in the town below is calling the faithful of Muhammed to evening prayer. Sitting along the cliff’s edge, Nicolò watches the sunset and listens to the echoing chant from mosques, from homes, even from the roadsides. Halfway up the path there is a man teaching a boy--his son, most likely: the cloth of the man’s tunic matches the boy’s scarf--how to pray. Nicolò watches them move through the steps together, rising then bowing, kneeling, prostration, rising again. It is strangely restful to him, when for so long the sight of non-Christians in prayer inspired an instinctive...not _hatred_ precisely, but close enough that the difference does not matter. 

It feels strange to hold that part of himself out and look at it with open eyes. He was taught to see these people as something that affronted God and needed to end, but here is a father teaching his son to kneel and pray along with the city below them while the evening light glows through the trees. God cannot possibly hate this.

 _And if He does,_ Nicolò thinks, _then He is not God_. 

Once, it had felt like a bell being struck inside of him. That was the moment in the alley when he first saw Yusuf and thought him Jesus; he can laugh about it, now, to himself. Certainly Yusuf drawing water from a well was a far more accurate depiction of Jesus than any of the pale-skinned paintings Nicolò saw in a Christian church in Genoa. Now, the bell rings again and he thinks: God is love and love is God. This is something he has known but in only the narrowest sense. Now in his mind he casts it out like a cloud and lets it fall like rain over the city: God is love and love is God. The love of a father for his son is God. Who is he to demand what name they call the Almighty when they pray, so long as they do so with love in their hearts?

He cannot quite bring himself to pray, here, but he longs to as the echo of bells rings in his mind. 

When the evening prayer is done, he rises and goes up the hill to the public entrance of the bathhouse. Somehow that seems polite; he hopes it is received in the spirit he intends it so. The bath is far more crowded than when he first came here with Yusuf and Nicolò keeps his eyes to himself as he baths quickly in the water. There aren’t any attendants here lunging out of dark corners to stick their hands in uncomfortable places, at least, so he mostly scrubs the sweaty places.

It does not surprise him at all to turn from the bath and find an attendant--a slave--waiting for him with blank eyes and a robe that he absolutely did not request. 

There is a room upstairs. It is not the same room they stayed in before-- _they_. He and Yusuf. Nicolò closes his eyes. Quỳnh never said anything about it but he would swear that he could _feel_ Yusuf even without the dreams. They are still so strange and changeable: sometimes they are brief glimpses of a different life parallel to his own, and sometimes he feels as if he _is_ Yusuf, moving through a desert landscape and--lately--spilling the blood of a hundred opponents, and sometimes he is even deeper than that. Just a sensation or an emotion. Dying, and fear. Killing, and rage. So much of both, lately.

Almost, almost, Nicolò had gone south--but Yusuf had made himself very clear in his desire to never see Nicolò again. He has respected so little of Yusuf’s wishes in the past that he feels the powerful need to obey them now. Seeing him might be the thing that throws Yusuf off the edge on which he’s teetering.

Someone in the room speaks and Nicolò snaps his eyes open. The attendant has come back to collect him, it seems. 

Nicolò allows himself to be led upstairs to the same rooftop as before. Ibrahim the hosteler wears different robes and seems less...presented than before, but he is no less observant. 

“ _Shalom_ ,” Nicolò greets.

 _Shalom_ and welcome,” Ibrahim says without hesitation. “Please, sit.”

Here, too, is someone who Nicolò should hate on sight: a Jew, much less a Jew acting as lord over an island nation that keeps away Christian soldiers and directly inhibits the conquest of the Holy Land. Having personally seen the conquest of those lands and what befell their inhabitants, however, Nicolò feels inclined to bend his previous opinions in this, as well. 

They sit and break bread. Ibrahim pours them both some wine and hails them with a toast. “What brings you back to Cypros?”

“I am not good at this,” Nicolò says once he has drunk from his glass. “I am not going to try to pretend that I am good at this. I am here because someone told me I could trust you. I don’t, yet, but I’m given to understand that I could. If what I have heard about you is true, you know exactly what I am talking about and have known about it long before I set foot on the island.” 

Ibrahim studies his face. “Not since the first time you set foot on the island. You have changed a great deal since last we met, Nicolò di Genoa, and I think we both need to understand exactly how much you have changed before we can proceed. You may not be what you once were but what, exactly, have you become?”

“Something else. I am not a priest nor a Crusader. Beyond that, I’d like to know first what you think I am.”

Ibrahim shifts in place, tapping one finger against his cup. “A few weeks ago, I received a visit from an old friend. A very old friend, with a very large axe, who informed me that her family had recently expanded in a most unexpected way. A birth is always cause for joy, but she was somewhat surprised to discover not one child, but two born together, such as never happened before in her family. She indicated that I, unbeknownst to even myself, had already made the acquaintance of these new arrivals, a revelation that I found so extraordinary as to strain the edges of belief. She requested that if either of you returned to my company, that I treat you with all the hospitality that I would extend to her.”

“And what was this friend’s name?”

“She has had many, but she told me to call her Andromache when I speak of her to others. Not that I do speak of her to others, of course.” 

Nicolò presses his lips together, uncertain of how much to reveal. Quỳnh told him that Ibrahim, like Tuccia, was one of their people who could be trusted, but having spent half a year in her company, Nicolò is of the opinion that Quỳnh either trusts far too easily or trusts too completely in her own ability to extract vengeance for a betrayal. He wonders if it is for this reason that he hesitates to trust Ibrahim, or if it is because Ibrahim is a Jew and Nicolò is trained to distrust Jews. 

This, he thinks, will take years to unravel, and in this conversation, at least, he does not have years to make a decision. 

He reaches for his cup and realizes quite suddenly that he can’t. His entire arm is numb and dead. He frowns at it.

Ibrahim is watching him. He smiles slightly, apologetic. “Forgive me. I am given to understand that the poison is relatively painless and I do not in any way wish to make you my enemy; only, this is not the sort of thing to reveal to an imposter. I have known the Lady of the Labrys all my life and I guard her secrets very carefully.”

As he speaks, more of Nicolò’s body has frozen in place, turning cold and tingling. His lungs spasm. That, contrasted with the cordiality of Ibrahim’s tone, inspires Nicolò to laugh. Through force of will he manages to pick up his glass and lift it in a toast, then down the rest before the world turns completely black. 

When he wakes, Ibrahim is standing over him, reaching for the poisoned cup that rests on the couch next to him. Nicolò seizes the front of his robe, pressing the edge of a knife to the man’s throat. 

Ibrahim slows his movements, but otherwise does not seem particularly alarmed as he sets the cup on the table without taking his eyes from Nicolò. “May G-d make you like Ephraim and Manasseh,” he says. When Nicolò gives no reply, Ibrahim continues, “I have in my keeping a considerable sum of coin, which I guard on behalf of Andromache and her family. She has instructed me to make a portion of it available to you, for whatsoever ventures you wish to pursue. But something tells me you did not come here for coin,” he adds.

Slowly, Nicolò releases him. “No.”

Ibrahim regains his seat, wipes the rim of his cup, and hands it over to Nicolò before pouring another cup of wine for himself. “Andromache said that Yusuf al-Kaysani, too, is her kin?” When Nicolò doesn’t answer, he smiles and waves a hand. “I only ask because I thought you might be here on his behalf.”

 _Yusuf_. Nicolò pushes away the memory of their time here; that is not for him. Judging from the dreams he has had recently, they are not for Yusuf anymore, either. He doesn’t know exactly what has happened, but now...Yusuf’s days are filled with fighting and pain, threaded with a maddening grief so wild as to throw his thoughts into ever-increasing turmoil.

“Why would I be?” Nicolò asks.

Ibrahim considers him for a long moment, then rises and beckons. 

He leads Nicolò along an outer stairwell to the roof of an adjoining building--his own living quarters, Nicolò realizes, as they descend from the roof into a space that is far less fit to a king than a simple man, one who seems to live alone. 

As they travel, Ibrahim says, “You strike me as the sort of man searching for his purpose, Nicolò di Genoa. If that is so, good. There is much that you and your kin can do for the world, as Andromache did for me. There is a saying among my people--’If you save one life, then you save the world in whole,’ and I know at least one life that you can help to save.”

They pass into a secluded garden tucked between the cliff face and sitting in the garden is a woman dressed all in black with a scarf pulled over her hair. She is bent over a small table and scribbling furiously in a book by candlelight; when they enter, however, she raises her head.

Only the instinct of stealth that Quỳnh has spent a year drilling into him keeps Nicolò from yelping her name in shock.

Instead, Khalida looks at him with widening eyes and gasps, “ _Nicolò_.”

A/N

-”May G-d make you like Ephraim and Manasseh” is a blessing in Judaism that has a _wide_ variety of meanings. In this writing I am taking the interpretation of the Rabbi Zweig who said this quote meant an acknowledgement of people who have grown up surrounded by a faith not of the Jewish people but still managed to hold true to their Jewish beliefs. In context of _Ibrahim’s particular character_ and who he is in the world, Ibrahim means this blessing as an acknowledgement that Yusuf and Nicolò are a pair of people who Ibrahim hopes will both hold true to a central tenant: that God means people to take care of one another, above all else. (https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://talmudicu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Vayechi-12-30-17.pdf&hl=en)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Limassol
> 
> -o-
> 
> Warnings for death by suffocation.

Limassol

Ibrahim leaves them far too easily in Nicolò’s opinion, seeming to fade away into the very grass itself. Nicolò finds himself sitting in the candle-lit cliffside garden overlooking the nighttime city with Yusuf’s wife, Khalida. 

Clearly she knows him. She called his name and has fixed his face with a wide-eyed stare ever since that moment. Now she takes a very deliberate seat across the circular table from him and sets her interlocked hands on top of the tabletop. 

“Were you expecting to find Yusuf here?” she asks.

“ _No_.” Nicolò cannot imagine anything more horrible. He would fling himself off the cliffside if that happened. Yusuf has made his feelings very clear and Nicolò will respect them to the point of death and beyond if he must. Certainly, death would be less excruciating. “How do you even know me?”

“He drew you. Many times.” 

That is not--no, no. That is not for him. Nicolò does not inquire further by sheer force of will. 

“How do you know _me_?” she demands.

“I...saw you in Yusuf’s dreams.”

“Ah. Of course.” Despite the confidence of her words she looks momentarily bewildered. “I...you dreamed of each other. He said as much, but somehow it is so much stranger to hear it from you, as well. What--you have seen why I am here?”

“Not...quite. I know something has happened to him, and to his family. Is he well?”

“No,” she says. “No, he is not well. Bandits sent by the Caliphate, sent by my brother Mennad, attacked and killed members of his family. Killed him. But he lived, of course, as I’m sure you know.”

It is a question. Her gaze is too narrow not to be a question. By now it is almost fully dark around them and so Nicolò simply raises a finger and holds it above the candles to let her watch his skin burn and bubble and heal again. 

Before it can even heal all the way, she grabs his wrist and yanks his hand down. From the expression on her face they do not require another demonstration.

“What are you? Either of you, any of you! What has...I have known Yusuf my _entire life_. When we were young, Mennad nearly gored him with a stave and he bled as any child, so much that I thought he might die!”

“Is that what--?” Nicolò nearly bites his tongue in half. He’d been about to ask if that was the origin of the scar on Yusuf’s side. Khalida looks at him sharply, as though she can still hear the tacit admission behind his words. Instead he says, “We did not become immortal until the moment of our death, in Jerusalem. He died by my hand, and I by his.”

That, too, feels like an admission. She studies his face and Nicolò slips into his own intense contemplation of her in turn. In his dreams she had been radiant, drawn in intricate designs and adorned with jewelry. Now, the makeup has been scrubbed from her skin and in person she is a great deal shorter than Nicolò thought; under the table, the tip of her toe is braced on the ground, holding the entire rest of her body in tight repose. 

The sky above them is lit with stars. With the city below mirrored in torches, it is probably terribly romantic, or would be if Nicolò had space within him to imagine such a thing. “Why are you here?” he asks. “Yusuf sent you, surely. But--what are you doing?”

He jerks his chin at the pages under her elbow. At first she gestures as if to hide them, but then she shuffles them together with an air of forced importance. “I am to be Ibrahim’s accountant, if I can show him that I know my numbers. Yusuf told me to stay here until he followed, but a moon has passed since I arrived and I cannot live on the charity of a stranger forever. I must...prepare to make my own way.” For the first time she truly looks lost, staring at the rows of figures underneath her hands. “I cannot even send a letter to my mother and tell her where I am. If I did, my brother might find me.”

Nicolò shifts forward. “Will you tell me exactly what unfolded? The dreams are incomplete.”

She does so, reluctantly at first but with increasing speed and intensity, as if she herself craves the retelling as much as he. When she speaks of Yusuf’s grief over his slain family, Nicolò cannot restrain himself from weeping; he has felt fragments of it firsthand, but it had felt somewhat like an extension of his own mind, and the reality of it happening to Yusuf is so much more horrible. 

Once she has completed her account, she spends some more time examining his face, though this time in a notably different way. “You love him, don’t you?”

To deny would be a falsehood. And why should he lie? He will never confess it before God, he might as well confess it to her. He nods. 

“I thought,” she says, but does not elaborate. “You said the dreams are incomplete? But can you...see him, now? Where he is?”

A desert. He is pursuing something, or someone. He rides and rides, and sometimes he catches up to something and kills it, or fights it to a certain point, and then he rides and rides some more. The longer he rides and kills, the more he loses of himself, as if he has tied one end of a thread in the place where he came from and it has been steadily unraveling the whole of him.

“Yes.”

Slowly, she sits forward. She looks him in the eye. He knows. All of him seizes in dread, but he will not say no.

-o-

It is late summertime and brutally hot in Neápolis, muggy near the ocean and smelling of dead things. Some actually heathen clans still live here among the Roman ruins and sacrifice to the old gods, which draws carrion of all kinds, even the human variety. They look--quite a bit more like Nicolò than any of the other locals. He still cannot tell an Arab from the other tribespeople of this land on sight, but the heathens are mostly lighter-skinned, and he recalls with a jolt that they very possibly descended from his own stock. 

The majority of the city has long since converted to Yusuf’s faith, and they seem as repulsed as Nicolò. This gives him pause and he finds himself spending time amongst the ruins, watching the heathens make their sacrifices. They, too, are humans caught in the grasp of the world and struggling to find solace in their customs. It makes him laugh, now--without an ounce of mirth--to think of his previous notions about _Saracens_. 

The presence of light-skinned heathens does grant him a comfortable state of anonymity. In a veranda near the short, he sits and drinks watered-down wine from a carafe while the waves occasionally wash up near his feet. He smiles, thinking of the place in Palermo where he first met Quỳnh.

His Arabic is still not very good, but he catches some of the conversation happening around him. An unusually hot summer. What is to be done about it? Nothing but to survive. Comments about the expected campaign of the Caliphate against the barbarians who slaughtered al-Quds. Curses against the barbarians and the Caliphate, though less against the latter. Frankly, Nicolò is surprised to hear any, though now that he thinks about it he has surely cursed Normaunds, even though Otho de Lagery himself was a Normaund. 

Gradually, Nicolò begins to hear the whispers underneath. A strange story to the west: a groom, killed on his way to the wedding feast, who rose from death by the will of Allah and now walks the dunes as a desert spirit exacting revenge on those who wronged him in life. The faithful have nothing to fear but the corrupt, oh, they run like they have never run before, but they shall never escape him. He is a desert spirit born of rage. Nothing can stop him. It may be that the unusually hot summer is born of that spirit’s rage, scorching the wells that would normally feed those who he pursues.

If Nicolò could, he would make it rain wherever Yusuf is right now. Whenever he wakes, Nicolò’s throat aches from dryness. He thinks that Yusuf has died from thirst more than once. 

Taking up his pack, the same one that he assembled when he set out from Monte Pellegrino, Nicolò travels from the southern gates of Neápolis. He travels out into what can only be called a blinding heat. It burns his eyes, his face, his scalp. He begins to understand why everyone in this land is commanded by God to cover their skin, for that seems the most reasonable way to survive. 

He has no sense of the landmarks, here. The temples of Carthage give way to the desert proper and in that he is almost instantly lost. Using the calculations that Khalida made, he has a general sense of the direction in which Yusuf has traveled and where he might go to intercept him; using the sun by day and the stars by night, he moves south and west as best he can, even as the ground underfoot becomes less and less solid. 

Eventually it is nothing but sand.

Sand, he quickly finds, is deceptive. It slips underfoot and deceives the length to which he has traveled; he thinks he must have gone a full league only to glance up at the stars and estimate it must be less than half. Mostly he travels by moonlight, sleeping under a quickly-made shelter during the day as advised by Khalida and Ibrahim. 

In Nicolò’s dreams, Yusuf makes no such shelter for himself.

Eventually any landmarks that Nicolò could identify fall away and he is moving forward purely on instinct. He knows that if he goes far enough north he will find the ocean again, but that is all. The continent before him is fully a mystery, and yet he presses onward, following the momentary scraps of dream and instinct until--

Until he scales a dune and sees before him an apocalypse. 

It fills the horizon. A wall of swimming, surging dust covers the horizon from south to north, and even as he stands there watching, Nicolò can tell that it’s coming towards him. The sky darkens before it, as if daylight itself fails to penetrate the cloud.

For a long time he stands, panting, watching the storm. It comes from the west, which means that Yusuf is already somewhere in it.

Then he begins to descend the dune and travel into the storm. 

-o-

In the end, it is not that difficult to find Yusuf. It is simply instinct. 

One of them dies. Nicolò isn’t sure who dies first. Whoever it is, the other one orients in that direction like the point of a compass that neither of them will know about for several centuries to come. 

The whirl of wind and sand is awful and entirely unfamiliar to Nicolò. He staggers through it until he cannot anymore, until the sand crowds in his mouth and he realizes that he is dying, he is drowning on dry land, he is

He wakes facedown on the sand and staggers up. In what direction is Yusuf? He cannot see the stars. He cannot see anything. Even opening his eyes is painful. Turning back to what he thinks is the way he came, Nicolò runs as far as he can.

He wakes facedown on the sand and staggers up. He thinks...he thinks the way before him is the way forward. Before he entered the desert he had purchased a headscarf on the advice on the man who sold him his provisions, and now he holds it in front of his face and runs blindly, trying to get as far as he can before the ragged breaths in his throat begin to taste of blood. Not too soon after that, his

Something crashes into him and it takes Yusuf a half-wild moment to recognize the shape of a shoulder, a knee, a torso. Blindly he claws for the knife at his side, for who else would be in this nightmare of wind and sand except for the men he has been pursuing for days? Lashing out, he feels it sink into flesh again and again, feels dampness against his fingers and the animal part of him wants to drink it, desperate for any moisture at all. It has been days since he 

He wakes on his side and staggers up. The wind whistles in his ears. Something both soft and hard lies under him: a human body. Even opening his eyes is agony but Nicolò gropes at the body, feeling out the shape of it. Is that Yusuf? He does not know for sure: he cannot see, cannot even smell him, but something inside Nicolò says it must be. Certainly the knife-thrusts were familiar to their past encounters. Dragging the limp form up with one arm, he tries to hold his scarf over his mouth

He wakes and someone is dragging him through the sand. Yusuf claws for his knife and finds it gone. Twisting around, he blindly lashes out at where he thinks the man’s head might be and they both tumble to the ground. He cannot seem to get his feet under him, still trembling in the grip of lightning that brings them back to life, but he scrambles up and finds a throat by rote. He has killed so many--so many men, so many--it’s been two moons of blood and it’s first nature by now to grip and dig in his thumbs around the man’s windpipe. Hands clasp his forearms but do not struggle, simply go slack. Once the body under him is limp, Yusuf scrabbles for a waterskin, for food, for anything, anything. He must get to shelter of some kind. He is a desert creature, he know what to do in a haboob, this is

He wakes on his back, his mouth quickly filling with sand, and rolls onto his side to spit it out. There is nothing but the wind, ripping away his very thoughts. Ducking low, he crouches in the sand and feels it grow about his ankles and fill his boots. Something grabs at him. He lashes out into the blur of dust and wind. For a moment there is something wet against his hand. Then something sharp pierces his side and steals his breath from

He is upright. He walks a few feet with his hands out in front of him. Feeling his way. Sand stings his palms, the wind is so fast

In the desperate, fleeting space between the lightning bolt of life and the copper taste of drowning on dry land, he begins to sing.

Somewhere in the darkness beyond his eyelids, someone is singing.

Somewhere nearby, wind whistles through a crack in something. Fabric flaps and rustles; a tent, in high wind. 

When Yusuf opens his eyes, the lids almost stick together. Sand, sand everywhere. 

Fear of being recognized by someone along the regular trade routes had driven him south into the edges of the great desert, in pursuit of the last remnants of the Caliphate agents who took part in his family’s slaughter. The bandits hired to do the deed were easy to find but their pursers were not. They had fled al-Mahdīyah and al-Qayrawān in droves: some might not even have been involved in what was done against his family, but were close enough to fear his wrath. 

All of them met it in the end, one after the other.

The haboob had caught him outside of Ṭarābulus. He’d been traveling at night due to the heat and the storm had come from behind: he hadn’t noticed the stars start to disappear until it was already on him. His stolen horse had fallen out from under him, drowning on dry land. Yusuf had struggled on with his scarf drawn across his face, blinded and deafened by the stinging sand, until the wind had stolen his breath, too, filling his mouth and lungs with dust that mixed with blood in his throat and lungs. Then he’d awakened, coughed up the paste, and struggled on. 

So the cycle had gone for hours, until the already-frayed edges of his mind began to unravel completely. Drowning was a terrible, agonizing way to die: his body kept sucking in more of what killed him, and there was no escape from the wind. The horror of coming back to life in that maelstrom and knowing that he only had a few minutes before he died again--it made him not want to come back at all. Death was a relief.

Now, remnants of the storm still rage, but he is not lying on sand anymore. He can’t see anything with his eyes closed or open, but by feeling around he identifies stone underneath and behind him. Cloth overhead in a kind of lean-to, protecting him from the wind. In front of him--

His fingers touch something warm and living, and he snatches them back. Something audibly moves in the darkness.

“Yusuf?”

It feels like the wind again, stealing his breath. _Nicolò._

He says nothing out loud and after a moment Nicolò’s hands touch Yusuf’s arm, groping down to his palm, and then a waterskin is pressed against his fingers. He fumbles with it in the perfect dark, his memory tainted by the foul mixture of bloody mud that had filled him and killed him so many times. The first drop of water on his tongue changes all that and he drinks greedily. He can’t remember how long it has been. Even before the haboob, he had died from the sun and lack of water several times. 

Once he has slaked his thirst, he slumps back to the hard stone, half-sprawled on his elbow. The cloth of the lean-to is too low for him to put his back against the stone properly. He can still see nothing in front of him. “How are you here?” he rasps. 

Nicolò’s voice says, “I dreamed of you, traveling east. Ibrahim said you must be traveling to Neápolis. I--know you must be displeased that I’m here, but you seemed--”

“Ibrahim? You’ve been to--did you see--”

“Khalida. Yes. She was already there when I arrived in Cypros. She gave me the coin to hire a ship bound for Neápolis.”

They lie close in the dark, close enough that Yusuf can feel the shift of air every time Nicolò moves; but they do not touch. After seeing Nicolò in his dreams so many times, Yusuf finds himself straining his eyes in the dark to catch sight of anything, a cheekbone, the flash of teeth, anything. 

“Where did she get the coin?” he asks. There had been enough for her to get to Cypros, to make a life for herself. If she had wasted it on retrieving him…

“Technically it was Andromache’s money, but Ibrahim keeps it safe for her and she told him to give some to us. Khalida is Ibrahim’s accountant, now, so technically she was the one who gave me the coin. She made me sign a piece of paper and everything.”

Wind whistles around their little shelter. “What?” Yusuf says finally.

Briefly, Nicolò’s voice recounts the events of his last three weeks: traveling to Cypros, Ibrahim’s greeting, meeting Khalida, traveling here to find Yusuf. “Have you not dreamed any of this?” he asks.

“I have not slept much,” Yusuf admits. It has been hard travel through unforgiving lands, pursuing his enemies, with not much food. If he slept it was only a few minutes at a time, jolting awake at the call of an animal or the sound of hooves, sometimes sleeping amongst the dead of those whom he had just slaughtered. If he did dream in that time, he does not remember it. 

“Sleep now. Khalida is safe, I promise.”

Yusuf breathes in just to enjoy the simple luxury of clean lungs. “The sand might bury us.”

“Then we will dig our way out.”

Spoken like someone who has never lived in the fucking desert; but Yusuf is too tired to argue that point with him.

He wakes again sometime later with a jerk, gasping for breath that comes easily enough. The wind has stopped. The dark feels so close and he flails out; but his hands touch nothing alive, no matter how much he gropes around in the narrow space.

Bolting up, he rips away the tarp above him. It was secured to a stone wall behind him with staves, which land in the piled sand around the makeshift shelter. Above him rise the stone arches of the Leptis Magna, which Yusuf had been seeking in the storm, and which provided them with a small measure of additional protection. When he shakily makes it to his feet, he can see beyond the low wall into the desert, which is sand, sand, sand.

At his feet rests a full waterskin, his saif, a purse filled with enough coin to travel anywhere in the Baḥr al-Rūm, and a carefully-wrapped package of dried meats, hard cheese, and a very crusty loaf of bread.

The sand in every direction around him is undisturbed. Yusuf looks, but finds no footprints anywhere. 

-o-

He goes to Ṭarābulus. If the men he pursued did not die in the sandstorm then they must have come here. Or if there was anyone--well, this is the closest city. 

Somewhere within its walls lives his younger sister, Farah. But she is married to an official of the local Caliphate administration, albeit a low-level one; even if he could be trusted, it would be bringing trouble to their doorstep if Yusuf sought refuge with them. Yusuf grits his teeth as he feels another family member slip from him. 

What the Arabs call Ṭarābulus is three cities in close proximity to one another. The Roman city of Leptis Magna has been all but abandoned; so has Sabratha, with its grand theatre, but what was once called Oea by the Greeks has claimed the ghosts--and the marble stones--of both. Situated on the eastern shore of a large bay, Ṭarābulus gleams in the evening light, its torches glimmering off smooth white walls. Like everywhere in this part of the world, it has changed hands many times over the course of its long history, but its foundations remain the same, so well protected by the peninsula to the west and the long stretches of desert to the south. 

Approaching its southern gate, Yusuf feels every bit the bedraggled half-man that he is. Old blood and rips caused by blades mark his clothes but he thinks he can spin a story of--what? Rescuing someone from bandits, but he cannot...seem to think of any details that would make the story more convincing. He hasn’t spoken to anyone in...days? Dying screams and lifeblood trail in his wake. 

As he approaches the guardpost, he arranges his face in what he thinks is a friendly smile of greeting. He is wrong: both of the two guards standing there take one look at him and close ranks to block Yusuf’s path into the city.

“Who are you?” one of them asks.

“As-salāmu ʿalaykum,” Yusuf greets, because it pays to be polite even if they aren’t. “My name is Yusuf.” The name is common enough to pass without question. “I have come from--”

“What do you have on you?”

They close in on him and Yusuf fights the instinct of the last--however long it’s been, to lash out. These are not the men who butchered his family, nor are they the men who paid for that to happen. As horrible as it has been to kill those people, it will be twice as bad to slay these men, who are simply doing their jobs. 

“What merchant did you take this from, eh?” One of the guards has plucked the coinpurse from his belt and hefts it in his hand, whistling. 

“I took it from no one.” The truth does not seem to help Yusuf, as the purse disappears into the man’s cloak. The other man reaches for his shimshar and Yusuf twists away sharply. Why he does so, he cannot say: more than once in the past weeks, he has looked down at that blade drenched in blood and desired nothing more than to cast it as far away from him as possible. Still, it is the only thing left on his person that he has carried from the shattered remains of his home. 

He says, “That is mine.”

Apparently that is enough for them to reach for their own weapons. “Please no,” Yusuf chokes, putting up his hands and backing away. “I don’t want to--”

One of them lifts his saif and an arrow seems to grow out of his elbow. He screams and drops the sword, clutching at his arm. Yusuf stares, frozen in the act of backing away. 

The other guard, who had been slightly in front of the wounded man, glances back then throws an alarmed look at Yusuf, who flings his arms higher to show his empty palms. That does not acquit him and the second guard lunges at him.

Something whizzes past Yusuf’s ear, close enough to ruffle the curls of hair that stick out of his headscarf. It’s another arrow, and it plunges into the second guard’s neck.

He drops to his knees, clutching at the shaft with both hands. Yusuf wants to tell him not to pull it out but is too busy dropping into a crouch, himself. 

There’s another high-pitched noise in the air above Yusuf’s head and he ducks low. Somewhere nearby there’s a wet crunch and he looks up in time to watch the first guard, pierced through the elbow and the eye, drop to the ground dead.

Panting, Yusuf claws his shimshar from its sheath and spins around. No one else had come up to the gates at this time of night and so the space beyond the glow of torchlights is dark all the way to the western horizon, still blue with the glow of the sun beyond its edge. 

Behind him, the second guard gurgles and falls face first to the ground. 

Standing and turning in a full circle, Yusuf stares out into the night. The flickering light of the guards’ torches only illuminates a few paces in front of him. Within the arched opening of the city walls, he can distantly see people moving about, but no one glances out in his direction. 

“Nicolò?” he calls hesitantly, not wanting to make any more noise. 

The night gives no answer and after a long moment of waiting he hesitantly plucks the coinpurse for the first guard’s belt and hurries into the city.

-o-

In the earliest part of the day, before sunlight will show the dried bloodstains on his clothes, Yusuf buys fresh garments from a merchant just inside the city walls. They are flea-ridden and harsh against his skin but they will do. 

A boat to Cypros leaves in two days. During that time, he learns to wear his coinpurse on the inside of his tunic, tucked on the inner band of his pants against his skin. Periodically he will take out coins and hold them in his hand, as if he has just begged them from a merchant in the street. Whatever he needs he buys piecemeal and pays that much more for it; never has he had to worry about going hungry before, but now he takes two meals a day and eats them slowly over several hours. The parcel of food left to him in the desert he saves for the trip across the water. 

At night he finds a wall to sleep against. Once, it would have bothered his soft bones; now, it is better than tumbling to the ground in a stupor of grief and bloodlust. 

He does not go deep enough into sleep to dream. In the day he wanders the city, watching out of the corners of his eyes.

The name of the ship that carries him to Cypros is not known to him. He is one anonymous passenger of five, packed into a single room together belowdecks. Whenever the seas are even, they are allowed to stretch their limbs, but sometimes the crew herds them into the room with yelled curses and shoves. Yusuf bites his lip and does not complain. He has kept his shimshar wrapped in cloth since he first entered Ṭarābulus and he rarely tarries far from it; once, he returned to the stinking room to find one of the other passengers pawing through his belongings, though the man adamantly denied it and threatened to report _Yusuf_ to the captain. The other man had been Arab, as was the captain, and so Yusuf had not spoken up about the attempted theft. 

After a week of this, he is imminently grateful to sight Mount Olympos, even though it only serves to make him recall his conversation with Nicolò. Yusuf has not seen him anywhere on the ship and knows for a fact that there was no passage to Cypros before this exact journey, so he must conclude--well, he does not know. He has looked, and felt foolish for doing so. 

Limassol is beautiful even in the rain. It falls in warm patches, swelling and ebbing as if with the tides. Yusuf, a boy from the desert, lifts his face to feel it wash across his features, and he is not the only one to do so along the streets near the docks. It is the first thing in--Wallah, a full moon? It’s been so long since he saw another person and thought of them as anything other than an adversary for him to attack and kill, or at the very least defend himself from. Something held tight inside of him loosens: here the world, full of people as complicated and lovely as he remembers. 

There are children. They dart here and there, maybe picking some pockets as they go. Yusuf smiles at them and keeps what remains of his coinpurse inside his tunic.

“Al-Tayyib?” One of the cleaner-looking children parts from the crowd and gazes directly up at Yusuf. “Yusuf al-Tayyib?”

It takes a moment to sink in. How Ibrahim even heard that silly name...who must have told him? “Yes,” he says.

“My master bids you welcome, and is desir--desirtous--”

“Desirous,” Yusuf prompts gently.

“Des-i-rous of your company, sir.”

For him to send word instead of simply assuming that Yusuf would come to him--he has not been sure how much of the conversation in that makeshift tent was real and how much was an invention of his own mind, but if Ibrahim wanted to be absolutely sure that Yusuf would come to him straight away…

He hastens in that direction, his heart lifting in hope. All of what he has done--it was all to to ascertain Khalida a safe passage from al-Mahdīyah, it would do him well to see her safe.

At the same time, he dreads seeing her again. He cannot simply walk from the desert and wash his hands in the sea; he is not the same man that he was when they parted. He has killed her brother. He has killed so many other people and while he does not regret a single fall of his sword, he knows that he should. The man who married Khalida would have at least regretted the necessity of that violence but this person he is now...the best that he can say is that he did not take pleasure in any of the killing.

Not much, anyway.

Something very important inside of him has changed. Like Caesar, he has passed over a river from which there is no return, and he isn’t sure yet who he is in the strange land where he finds himself. 

Plagued by these inner torments, he mounts the stairs after his vernal guide, only to draw up short when something bright shines in his eye. Leaning against the stone steps just ahead of them is an unsheathed sword, reflecting the sun with its perfectly polished blade.

It’s his shimshar. The one he left with Nicolò in Sicilia, when he went to find Abu.

Yusuf’s whole body goes hot all over like a spark. He’d looked on the boat and thought--he hurries up the rest of the stairs.

When he reaches the top he draws up short again, for Khalida sits in a garden terrace before him. She turns on her seat and sees him, rising swiftly with relief on her face, but Yusuf can tell that she is distracted, her head cocked the slightest bit to her left. Ibrahim makes no such attempt to dissemble and outright gazes in that direction, though his expression is much harder to interpret; he, too, rises and refocuses on Yusuf with one eyebrow upraised in a question that Yusuf has no idea how to answer, not while his ostensible _wife_ is hastening to embrace him in greeting. 

He knows, though. He knows.

Nicolò is here, and doing his level best to avoid Yusuf.

A/N

-Otho de Lagery is another name for Pope Urban II, who summoned the first Crusade.   
-The Lepcis (or Leptis) Magna is a Roman ruins 81 miles away from modern Tripoli. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptis_Magna. Then there’s Sabratha (43 miles away). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabratha. Both were already essentially abandoned in Yusuf’s time, but combined with the Greek-founded city of Oea, this became known as the three-city region, or Tri-polis. What we call Tripoli in modern times is Oea.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Limassol
> 
> -o-
> 
> Lots of warnings for Nicolò's eating disorder, small warning for a period-accurate term that refers to probably-underage sex worker.

Nicolò is...fine.

He is completely fine. There is no reason for him to be up so early in the morning. No reason for him not to have gone to sleep at all, except the possibility that he might catch a glimpse of whatever Yusuf might be doing with his wife. It seems a terrible violation for him to spy on them, even unwillingly so, in his dreams. Mayhaps he is close enough to Yusuf now that he will not dream of them but he has no way of knowing for certain. 

Not that he has any reason not to dream of them. Yusuf is not for him, has made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with Nicolò. Why should he avoid sleeping and the possibility of dreaming about Yusuf with someone else? He has no right to feel anything about it at all. 

His stomach hurts. 

He goes to find something to eat.

The reach of Ibrahim’s power reaches far beyond the hotel on the hillside. He holds interest in many of the city’s businesses, and the rest still come to him with their troubles. Last night, Nicolò had found one such business at the foot of the mountain, a humble lodging house with only one room marked by the crude carving of a labrys above the door. He had stowed his belongings, which at this point mostly consist of extra pairs of clothes; Quỳnh was very adamant about the necessity of extra clothes, and having bled through more than one pair, Nicolò can see her reasoning.

Now the proprietress, a gaunt, dark-skinned woman missing her right arm, smiles gently at his broken Arabic and serves him a bowl of porridge from the steaming pot over her fire. Carrying the bowl out into the light of early dawn, Nicolò climbs the hidden staircase built into the cliffside where Ibrahim’s servants come and go. A few give him uncertain glances as he passes them, but none stop his ascent. Nicolò smiles to them and murmurs a quick greeting in Arabic, or what he hopes is a greeting. His own language would likely be alarming for them to hear.

Finding a staircase that runs up the side of a stone wall with good sightlines over the city, the entrance of the ḥammām and--if he cranes his neck--the balcony of the room that he is fairly certain Yusuf stays in, Nicolò settles in. A slight chill lingers in the air: it is late in the year, at least October, and he smiles faintly to think that it’s been almost exactly two years since he last came here with Yusuf. It feels longer. He feels ancient. 

One day, he probably will be.

In any case, he’s glad he kept the short, hooded cowl that Quỳnh took off a dead body in Genoa and declared ‘perfect for him.’ It’s looser than the headscarves worn by the women of Yusuf’s faith and lightweight, but still keeps his ears warm as he huddles on the stone steps. The sun is just coming up and he wraps his fingers around the warm bowl, murmuring a quiet prayer over the food.

As always, he feels a flare of disquiet as he does so. After months of meditative thought on the subject, he still cannot parse the evil woven through what he has been taught to believe. He knows that it is there; some threads are more obvious than others, especially the beliefs about Saracens and other non-Christians. Nicolò has spent eight months, night and day, in the company of a heathen woman and if anyone tried to convert her or force her to do anything she didn’t wish to do, he would hack that person to shreds of meat fit for the dogs. Not that she would need any help, of course, but Nicolò _loves_ Quỳnh. She is his family. 

If God Himself appeared before Nicolò and demanded that he condemn and destroy Quỳnh, as he was commanded to do by the Pope and the Church, then Nicolò would have to find a sword big enough to kill God.

And yet still he prays. He can’t not. It no longer brings him any peace, but he fears that if he stopped, if he cast God out of his heart for good, there would be nothing left in him. 

At least he’s found another way to clear his mind. Digging up a large spoonful of goopy porridge, Nicolò grimaces. While likely perfectly nutritious, it’s unappealing in both consistency and appearance, reminding him of--of--well, it is a clear indication of the sinful direction of his thoughts that he thinks it looks a bit like a man’s seed. Just perfect. Rolling his eyes at himself, Nicolò shoves the spoon into his mouth before he can think better of it and gags before he can even draw the utensil back out. The taste doesn’t even register, just the texture: it coats the inside of his mouth and throat with stickiness.

He gags again then forces himself to swallow. Other thoughts trickle away as he falls into the familiar rhythm of eating. Take a spoonful of the porridge. Gag. Swallow. Breathe. Take another bite. Gag. Swallow. Gag some more. Breathe. Bite. Gag, gag, gag. Swallow it down. Breathe. Prayer no longer clears his mind and so he does this instead: find the most unpleasant but still-nourishing thing he can find and force himself to eat it until his head is clear. 

In his life with Christ, he’d found nearness to God through fasting; but God does not want him near, has placed Nicolò outside His love and commanded him to serve his fellow man. So: Bite. Gag. Swallow. Breathe. Half the bowl is gone already but his mind is still cluttered and Nicolò grimly contemplates going to get more. Certainly it would give him more energy for the tasks ahead of hi--

“For fuck’s sake,” says a voice above him.

Nicolò jolts. He’d been so focused on chasing some mental peace that he hadn’t--he presses back against the stone wall as Yusuf clatters down the stairs to snatch the bowl from his nerveless hands. 

“What the fuck are you _doing_?” Yusuf demands. His face is a storm of rage. 

Nicolò has no answer for him. All of his careful distance, all of the barriers he has put between himself and his useless heart are ripped away in an instant. He stares up at Yusuf, silent and frozen.

“I have seen you at this before, you bastard, don’t think I haven’t.” Yusuf gestures with the bowl of porridge, then scowls and outright chucks it behind him. It sails over the edge of the stairs. After half a moment there’s the distant crack of crockery hitting stone, though thankfully no indignant yells. “Why would you do that to yourself, on purpose?”

Why? Nicolò can’t even begin to find the words. He’d never imagined having to justify it to anyone. Quỳnh had noticed, of course, but never asked; Yusuf had, but that wasn’t--none of what had passed between them in Palermo _mattered_ , or so Nicolò had told himself again and again. 

When he doesn’t answer, Yusuf sits down on the stone stair just above Nicolò’s. Their knees almost brush. Yusuf visibly realizes this and his face travels through a few small shifts of expression before he settles into place, his feet planted and his elbows resting on his knees. 

Despite the solidity of his position, however, he remains silent, studying Nicolò. It’s obvious that Yusuf has only just woken up: his dark curls are touseled--they’ve been treated with oil as well, likely in the ḥammām--and he wears only a long, pale gray caftan. His bare ankles are--right there. Their presence in the corner of Nicolò’s vision is thoroughly distracting. He must have awakened, walked out onto the balcony above, and seen Nicolò sitting here. 

Somewhere, Quỳnh is laughing and doesn’t even know why. Apparently a few days in Yusuf’s orbit is enough for Nicolò to forget all of her teachings. 

They sit there. Fortunately Nicolò is better-suited to long silences, and eventually Yusuf says, “I saw you among children.”

Of all the things he could have led with, this is most bewildering. For a terrible moment Nicolò thinks he means Jerusalem--but then he remembers Tuccia’s grandchildren, forever tugging his sleeves to be lifted in his arms then sticking their fingers in his mouth once they got up there. 

The memory’s sweetness bolsters him enough to say, “I saw you with Andromache. I am not sure which of us had the fiercer tutor.”

A smile slips across Yusuf’s mouth, there and gone again so fast. He stares down at his interlocked fingers. His expression is grave: in appearance he is not very much changed, of course, but at the same time something intrinsic to him has shifted, such that it hovers around him like an invisible cloak. 

“I am--” Nicolò begins at the same time that Yusuf starts, “Did you see--”

They both halt before Yusuf waves his hand, urging Nicolò onward. “I am sorry for being here,” Nicolò says. “There was only the one ship from Neápolis and Khalida made me promise to return with you.”

Yusuf cocks his head, staring at Nicolò. He says nothing, though, and so after some hesitation Nicolò continues, growing a bit more confident as he goes: “You owe me nothing and so I will not ask for your forgiveness. It was wrong of me to ask for anything from you. What trust you had bestowed in me--as your traveling companion, as your fellow in life beyond death--I broke and I have no justification for that. Worse, I have since realized that my motives were entirely selfish: I cared far less for the condition of your immortal soul than the hope of keeping you with me. I know that you do not wish to see me and I will leave this island as soon as I have secured the coin.”

He pauses, but Yusuf remains silent, his eyes wandering over Nicolò’s face. For once, Nicolò perfectly understands the complaint--voiced by many others throughout his life--about the unnerving intensity of his own stare. 

“I--do not know how long you intend to stay here,” Nicolò continues in the absence of any response. He is not that much shorter than Yusuf but, sitting at his feet, he feels very small and increasingly foolish. “I had intended to...not trouble you with my presence, but to leave once I was sure that you were safe. I am sorry that I did not better conceal myself from you...Ibrahim has mentioned several possible destinations to me, where people might be in need of a--”

“That is the second time that you have apologized to me,” Yusuf interrupts. “But for what, exactly, are you sorry? How did you wrong me?”

For all the times Nicolò has imagined this speech, he never answered that very question. All of it swirls around in his mind: there is what happened in Jerusalem, of course, but despite Nicolò’s best efforts, he cannot count Yusuf among his victims. Nor, indeed, could any other Frank, Normaund, or Genoese. What Nicolò did to Yusuf specifically is--less clear to him. The many times he killed Yusuf are almost comically easy to dismiss, as each has since been paid back in full, more so since their time in the desert. 

Nicolò’s great wrong against Yusuf--personally--came to a head at that chapel in Palermo, but try as he might Nicolò cannot put it into words. It is so tangled up in everything that came before that his tongue fails him and he looks away. Even his contrition is wrong. Best that he hold his tongue and simply leave; and anyway, his stomach has started to writhe up his throat. If he’s going to get out of eyesight and earshot before he sickens, he’d best start moving now. 

He hasn’t even got his feet under him, though, before Yusuf’s hand latches around his wrist like a manacle and pulls him back down. “Where the fuck are you going.”

“I--” Nicolò cuts off in order to swallow down his gorge. 

“Did you see the things I did in the desert?” Yusuf demands. His eyes are suddenly sharp and focused, no longer wandering. “You said that was how you found me.”

“Yes, I--I am sorry I did not come sooner, but I did not think you would have wanted my presence.”

“You saw.” Yusuf’s fingers flex on Nicolò’s wrist. “What would you say if a man confessed to such things to you?”

The image flashes through Nicolò’s mind: Yusuf, sitting in a pew with him, murmuring his sins before God and being welcomed into the world that Nicolò understands. A bolt of longing pierces his heart, followed swiftly by a wave of disgust so sharp that he loses his battle with his stomach. Wrenching away from Yusuf, he scrambles to the edge of the stone staircase and vomits over the side. A dozen feet down, the broken bowl rests in the grass--insult, added to injury. 

Behind him, Yusuf says, “Wallah.” Broad hands land on Nicolò’s heaving sides and he closes his eyes, unable to suppress his full-body shudder. After a moment, the hands disappear. 

“I’m sorry,” he says once he can. He wipes a shaky wrist across the back of his mouth. 

“I wish you would stop apologizing,” Yusuf tells him wearily. 

“Well I don’t know what else to say to you!” Nicolò snaps, then curses himself for the flare of temper. He wishes that Yusuf would just let him slink away to actually fling himself off a cliff. 

“Why did Khalida make you promise to return with me?” Yusuf asks.

“What? I don’t--I don’t know. She is very meticulous...maybe she wanted to know that I had spent the money the way I said I would.”

“She wanted to see my face,” Yusuf says in a low voice, as if to himself. In God’s name, the last thing Nicolò wants to hear about is the night Yusuf spent with his _wife_. He’ll pitch himself headfirst off this embankment if he has to.

“I’m going to Crete,” he chokes. The light is too bright. “There are people who need--the fires--”

“The fuck you are. You’re not going to fucking Crete.”

“ _What do you want from me?_ ” Nicolò shouts with his eyes closed tight. “I’ll go where you want me to, I am trying--you said never again so I stayed away, I will go wherever you want. You never have to see me again, I will throw myself into the ocean at your word, just do not-- _toy_ with me like this.”

“I’m not toying with you, Nicolò,” Yusuf says. “I would not.”

His voice is so low and soft. It’s like his hands but even worse. Nicolò crouches, miserable and blinded by his own means, on the stone step at Yusuf’s feet. He waits. 

“I need to go to Aleppo,” Yusuf says. 

Nicolò peels his eyes open. It stings, as though the lids want to stay together and resent their parting. Yusuf’s expression, when he looks, is made of stone. “You’ll,” Nicolò says. “It is. Controlled by the. Franks?” He’s not actually sure who among the Crusaders wound up in control of Aleppo. All of that was so far beyond his reckoning. He was a priest turned warrior, and a middling one at that.

“No, it’s not,” Yusuf tells him. “It’s still controlled by the Seljuks. But to reach the city, I have to pass through Antioch, which is under control of the Normaunds.”

Which means he needs to travel with someone who can pass as a Normaund, which is a horrible enough prospect in a variety of regards that Nicolò almost refuses before he catches himself and says yes.

-o-

If he’d known _why_ , Nicolò might have refused from self-preservation if nothing else. Even God must have His limits.

“Khalida has a twin,” Yusuf explains. They are traveling on a ship from Limassol to Latakia, which technically remains under the control of the Byzantine Empire despite the best efforts of Prince Bohemond of Antioch, who rules inland. They will have to pass through his territory to reach Aleppo, and Nicolò is already sprouting _hives_ at the thought of wearing the colors of a Normaund. He doubts that he can fake the accent. 

“I helped him to escape their brother.” Yusuf looks weary. Well, Yusuf always looks weary, now, no matter how much he sleeps. As always he rises late in the day, praying a few extra rounds of _salat_ whenever he cannot rouse in the morning, which is often. “That was--I wanted her to escape, as well. My hope is still that they will reunite.”

They are below decks on a mid-sized ship, well enough appointed that they have hammocks strung in a corner. Nicolò stares across the swinging, creaking expanse of the lower deck, watching crates slid back and forth with the waves. He is not an idiot, no matter what Yusuf thinks. He can very easily recall the features of Khalida--dark eyes, heart-shaped face, full lips--and imagine how appealing one might find them on a male face, were they so inclined. 

Reuniting Yusuf with his wife was one thing. Reuniting him with--

Well. Too late to back out, now. He contemplates tossing himself overboard on sheer principle. 

“Muhammed was in Baghdad,” Yusuf says. “I think. I hope. Apparently Khalida has already sent him a letter through Ibrahim’s contacts, but I don’t know how much I can rely on his...ideals.”

“Quỳnh trusted him,” Nicolò offers. He is numb other than this. He should be numb. Nothing here concerns his feelings in any way. 

“Well,” Yusuf says. “Good. She--Khalida says she asked Muhammed to travel to Aleppo, though she had not yet come up with a plan on how to travel from there through Crusader-held territories to the coast, or to safely transport him through the same. I imagine she was hoping that I might provide some kind of solution. If the message has reached him by now, he may try to send a reply, or he may simply move to obey--in which case, we should be able to find him in Aleppo. If he remains in Baghdad, we can send a message from Aleppo at far swifter speeds.”

“What if he is neither in Aleppo nor Baghdad?”

“If he is alive, he will be where he knows I can find him.”

They lapse into silence after that, Yusuf preoccupied with his thoughts and Nicolò still contemplating the icy grasp of the sea. 

Yusuf breaks the silence first. “I have not had opportunity to ask--what was Quỳnh like?”

“Oh. She was--she is wonderful. Yes.” Nicolò realizes he is smiling, as if he wasn’t just consumed with dread at the possibility of meeting Yusuf’s former lover. “She is clever, funny, and she reads Latin extremely well.”

“Does she? Where did she learn?”

“Rome. They sacked the city, but then they liked it so much that they stayed around.”

“Of course they did. Andromache gave me the impression that her favor could be...capricious. Dependent on how much she respected a particular ruler or military commander.” 

“What was Andromache like? I imagined someone wise, but Quỳnh was--she was wise, yes, but not in the way that I would have imagined.”

For a moment Yusuf studies the bottom of their hammocks. They are tucked in their alcove, seated with their backs to the curved side of the ship; the loose hammocks dangle across the space between them and the rest of the lower deck of the ship, providing some semblance of privacy so long as they remain seated. Nicolò had come back here to find a hidden vantage point and then Yusuf had gone and completely defeated the purpose by joining him instead of mingling with the crew as Nicolò had expected.

“She speaks little and means every word,” Yusuf says eventually. “She knows a great many things--she spoke of places and people that I learned about in history lessons, but far more clearly than any of those were the movements of her own body. She fights like she breathes. Violence comes to her as naturally as her eyes open in the morning light.”

He falls silent, his face troubled. Watching him, Nicolò says, “Quỳnh seemed to take pleasure in the violence. Not always. But sometimes.”

“Do you?” Yusuf asks without looking at him. 

Nicolò turns the question over in his mind. “When I know someone to be particularly vile, I feel great satisfaction at knowing that I have been their end. I rejoice in knowing that they will never harm another person. But in the violence itself--no. It is a tool.”

Yusuf says nothing and the conversation is not brought to its obvious conclusion, but that does not matter: two mornings later, a ship appears on the horizon with its prow pointed in their direction. Awareness of its presence trickles through the ship as it draws closer hour by hour, until there can be no mistaking the path of its intent. 

The ship creaks loudly as it moves through the water, having been driven to faster speeds by the captain’s orders. Quỳnh taught Nicolò a little about sailing, mostly learned from Lykon--who had been a proficient seaman--so even he can tell that their burst of speed will not be enough to evade a fight; their vessel is loaded with goods and slower in the water. The faces of the ship’s crew grow taut with worry. 

Nicolò has a trio of daggers that can be thrown or used in close quarters, well-suited to the cramped quarters below decks if they are boarded; Yusuf, his twin shimshars, reunited once again. He is wearing them both at his waist when he comes up to stand at Nicolò’s side, watching the pirate ship--for there is no doubt, by now--draw closer to them. Their ship has slowed, feigning submission even as the crew passes clubs from hand to hand. A few have bows, but when Nicolò quietly inquires if he might have one he is rebuffed. 

No matter. He will watch for when the first bowman falls and arm himself that way. 

Nicolò glances at Yusuf’s face, but finds his companion intently watching the pirate ship draw closer, with no care for anything else around him. He sways with the movement of the ship, but other than that he is very still. 

“Corsairs from the taifa of Majoraca,” he says. 

“Really? This far east?”

“Yes. I know the shape of their ships. They are experienced at this. If they meet resistance, they will not hesitate.”

The pirate ship draws near and casts hooks over the railing of their vessel. Their captain, with nerves of steel, holds the crew in check until the pirates have thrown wooden boards across the gap and the first few climb up to make the crossing.

The second a pair of boots touch their deck, the captain cries out, and then it is pandemonium. 

The first wave of pirates goes down under a salvo of arrows, but there comes swift reprisal from their ship in the form of shafts lit with flames. Nicolò manages to knock a few away with his hands, scorching his skin, and stamps out the flames of another two before more pirates cross to their deck. A bow finds its way into his hands, dropped by a flailing crewmember with an arrow in his chest, and then he loses himself to the repetitive movements of drawing a bow from the fallen man’s quiver, nocking it, and taking aim. He is in the front part of the deck--it has a name, but he can’t remember it presently nor does it seem important--and that gives him good vantage on the pirates trying to cross the plank to their ship. He shoots down one after the other. 

It takes him longer than it should have to check Yusuf’s location. He is accustomed to Quỳnh, who ranged around him but stayed near, habitated to the presence of another, more stationary fighter. Yusuf is not so conditioned and by the time Nicolò looks for him, he is halfway buried under a flurry of bodies. 

Despite his firsthand knowledge of their shared immortality, including his own memories of having killed Yusuf any number of times, Nicolò’s heart seizes in his chest. He springs to his feet and races along the length of the deck, pulling out his daggers as he goes.

He needn’t have bothered. An explosion of movement casts a few pirates backward and that is all the space needed to cut them down. One tries to go low and finds his chin split open on a kneecap, his chest soon to follow on the edge of a blade. Another is smoothly decapitated; another, stabbed through the chest and cast to the side in one motion; another, scrabbling across the deck toward safety, has her head smashed in with a boot.

Nicolò’s steps slow to a halt. He watches. The rumors that he heard of a desert spirit swirl to life here, on a ship in the middle of the ocean: a savage creature bent on destruction stands on the deck, killing all those in his path. There is nothing human in Yusuf’s face, only the swift calculations of an upward stroke or a stab to the chest. He kills, and he kills, and he kills. 

Eventually the flow of foes trickles to a halt. Those who remained on board the pirate ship fire a few volleys from distance but quickly either retract their gangplanks or let them fall into the sea as the ship pulls away, abandoning their attempt to board. Nicolò draws and shoots repeatedly at their rail to deter any change of mind, purposefully missing any human target as he does so.

Just as it took hours for the pirate ship to reach them, it takes some time for it to clumsily pull away, having lost a number of its crew to the attempt at boarding. Nicolò passes that time with his bow at the ready, but his eyes on Yusuf, who stands with both shimshars still drawn, his eyes fixed on the enemy ship and his breath heaving. 

Eventually there can be no more delay. Nicolò sets the bow down on the ground and glances around at the crew, finding a number of them still armed and eyeing Yusuf. They are not fools to do so: Yusuf’s eyes dance between the bodies at his feet, Nicolò, and the rest of the people still standing on the deck. From the way he stands, Nicolò can tell he still expects an attack, but doesn’t know from where. 

Slowly, Nicolò approaches him. In his dreams, Andromache taught Yusuf all the tricks of horsemanship; even without the benefit of those firsthand lessons, Nicolò thinks of a spooked horse and keeps his approach slow, his body loose and open. 

Yusuf keeps heaving his breaths in and out, hard enough that it moves the blades in his hands. It proves a moving target, but Nicolò still catches the tip of one shimshar in his hand; he keeps his fingers loose so as not to cut himself open on the sharp edge. It’s the one that he had in Palermo. He couldn’t say how he knows that, being as the two shimshars are identical by design, but he _knows_. This is the sword that Yusuf gave to him. He can tell.

Gradually, Yusuf’s breathing slows and steadies. The edge of his blade still rests against Nicolò’s skin but his grip on the shimshar’s hilt loosens until Nicolò lets go; then it reverses and Yusuf slides the sword into its sheath at his side. 

Its partner swiftly follows and then Yusuf stands on the deck with his arms hanging loose. There is still blood on his right arm and across his shoulder. None of it appears to be his, but he makes no effort to wipe it away. He looks at Nicolò and waits.

Chancing to move forward, Nicolò takes Yusuf carefully by the arm, using the gentlest of pressures to steer the man. Part of him cannot help but thrill at the physical contact, even as they step over the bodies of the fallen. Apparently the captain of the vessel is accustomed to such post-battle scenes, because she-- _she_ , a vague point of interest--merely nods in Nicolò’s direction and orders her men about the task of clearing the deck. 

The darkness below decks seems to rouse Yusuf, for he begins to resist Nicolò’s guidance. “All is well,” Nicolò tells him. He isn’t sure how much of the actual attack that Yusuf remembers. The dreams were so fragmented--Yusuf had killed so wildly, often without premeditation or even a plan. He’d fallen on his opponents without a care for himself. It’s hard to know how to bring him back from the edge of that. 

“All is well,” Nicolò repeats. He takes them to their corner and retrieves a jug of fresh water left there, wetting a rag before handing it to Yusuf, who fumbles to wipe blood from his hands and face. Nicolò, having fought mostly with a bow today, is relatively clean and sets to digging through his pack of clothes for a fresh tunic, speaking as he does so. “We are close to Latakia. It is another two nights of travel--likely we have been slowed by the pirate attack but I expect that we will regain speed. I do not think that anyone saw a mortal wound afflicted on you, being at the time preoccupied with the battle in progress, but...if they did, we...could...”

His words falter as he turns around with a clean tunic in his hands and finds Yusuf near to him, eyes fixed on Nicolò’s face. Nicolò wavers, watching Yusuf’s movements. They are so slow, so deliberate. On the deck it had seemed the breath of a moment for a man to move with a sword in his hand, but here, it feels like an hour.

His jaw is taken in Yusuf’s grip. His back meets a hard beam of the deck. Yusuf is in his arms, pinning Nicolò in place and pressing still closer. Yusuf kisses with abandon, opening his mouth like he wants to devour Nicolò. It is uncomfortable but Nicolò welcomes it, desperate for anything that Yusuf will give him. His limbs part easily, letting Yusuf in to take whatever he wants. Yusuf pushes between his legs like he belongs there, which--perhaps he does.

It would still be the worst, the most painful thing he can imagine, to let Yusuf have his body without any hope of--of what they had before, in Palermo. Which wasn’t his at all, Nicolò quickly reminds himself, so why should he not? Why shouldn’t he give Yusuf this? Has he not wronged the man in ways that he cannot even enumerate? He should do exactly this. _Yes_ , he thinks, savagely. _Yes, he will do this._

No sooner has he thought the words than Yusuf’s presence in his arms softens. Even carried in the flow of his own lust, Yusuf looks at him and frowns, stepping away. Nicolò cringes, trying to--how would he offer this? He tries to step close but cannot help averting his face, ashamed of his own desire. Fuck, how can he thread the needle between what he should not want and what he should offer? 

While he is still frozen in that state of uncertainty, Yusuf takes him by the shoulders and walks him back to sit on a hammock. Yusuf’s hammock, hung below his own; when he realizes this, Nicolò tries to sit upright, but Yusuf presses him back to lie down. 

“Stop,” Yusuf says, and so Nicolò does. He must...do what Yusuf wants, surely? Whatever that may be. A hammock seems inadvisable for the purposes of fornication but if Yusuf wants him here...their alcove is not very deep and poorly hidden from the rest of the lower decks, and while everyone else onboard is still above decks, dragging bodies to the rail and casting them overboard, someone might walk down at any moment, in which case--Nicolò and Yusuf would be in full view of everyone. Nicolò’s whole body flushes hot and his stomach tightens with a tangle of arousal and dread. 

From the hammock he watches as Yusuf finishes cleaning himself, prays, and carefully leans his shimshars against the side of the ship closest to them both, where no one else could reach them--then climbs into the upper hammock. It swings above Nicolò, Yusuf’s body suspended only an arm’s length over his own. Nicolò stares at the shape of him, wondering if Yusuf can hear the pounding of his heart. If he can, he does not show it; once he has settled into place, Yusuf remains still and silent.

They lie there, unmoving, for the rest of the day and night, until they reach Latakia at daybreak.

Yusuf does not know what to do. 

Well, he does, in the immediate sense. They have passed through Latakia. They stand at the gates of Aleppo, where they will hopefully find Muhammed; if not, they will go on to Dayru z-Zawr and from there send word to Baghdad. There would be no point in traveling further if they do not receive a response, for Yusuf only knows to go to the one residence and Baghdad is a sprawling city. 

Aleppo is on the edge of the Crusader-held territory. The Franks and their like have carved their way through this land from north to south, each prince staking his own claim like feasters to the limbs of a boar, but none have yet pressed further east than Aleppo, and thus it has become an outpost of all those who do not call themselves Crusaders or their allies. 

That makes it, objectively, a nightmare of refugees, all of whom are in a desperate search for their own families. Each their own story, their own life of interconnected lives, grasping for hope in a sea of indifference. 

It is a nightmare he has walked through before, many times, in his life as a merchant. In the past, he helped those he could and walked past those he could not, sealing away their grief in a tomb within his heart. 

Now, there are no tombs. Now, his heart is exposed. 

He does not know who he is, anymore.

They pass into the city. Him and Nicolò, who has followed across the sea. It is dangerous for him to go further; he will need to behave as a servant or slave to Yusuf, which they have not yet spoken of. Yusuf had not needed to do so at any point between Latakia and now, thankfully, though of course he was prepared to do exactly that. He would have groveled on the ground, should the need arise. 

At least, he thinks he would have. A clawed creature lives within his heart now. Maybe he would have just killed everyone in sight.

Aleppo is not a large city, dependent on the ebb and flow of refugees from al-Quds; the Crusader conquest has been one of many passing ailments of this area, albeit one more violent than others. As a place of refuge, it accepts all and asks no quarter save for the promise of a night’s rest. There are deserters from the Crusader armies, refugees fleeing the violence towards the coasts, opportunists seeking to turn a profit from the misery of others, and still the steady flow of mercantile trade from one direction to another, coveted by whatever conquerors would claim this land. 

They find a tavern, one that is already packed full with occupants and has no bed to spare but plentiful food and wine. Yusuf avails himself of both and turns his ear to the crowd, while Nicolò ventures out to search for lodging. The madame of the tavern is a broad-hipped woman whose skin is far darker than most found in this land and whose sharp eye misses nothing. When a finely-dressed traveler enters the room, she makes swift eye contact with both a catamite casually draped over the stairs and an urchin seated next to the fire, who move to obey her unspoken command. If one does not divest the traveler of his money, the other surely will. 

Yusuf hails her for another cup of watered wine and lays out an extra coin. “Have you served many travelers from the road to Baghdad, sister?”

The coin disappears before it even settles on the tabletop. “Many. Should there be one of note?”

“I am hoping to meet a friend from that city. He is younger than me, and very handsome. His name is Muhammed.” 

Something flickers in her eyes but she prevaricates, tapping her lips and gazing into space. Withholding a sigh, Yusuf produces another coin and she lights up, lifting her finger skyward as she swipes the second coin with her other hand. 

“Oh,” she says, “the boy from al-Mahdīyah. You must be…?”

“Yusuf.” His heart leaps. “He is here?” 

“Not _here_ , but staying in the old shepherd’s house outside the east gate. No one’s used it in years but the old man who owns it, he’s paid to have it cleaned up and the boy came to town just in time to take the job. Turn left just past the gate and follow the sheep-trails, you can’t miss it. He asked me to keep an eye out for travelers from al-Mahdīyah.” 

Yusuf exhales and pulls out a third coin to buy her silence on the subject. The mistress raises an eyebrow but nods her assent. 

Instinct tells him to hasten out the east gate at once, but instead he buys a second bowl of stew and a crust of bread. It is relatively early in the day yet, so he sits and waits until Nicolò returns, his hood pulled up over his head and his hand resting on the knife hilt at his belt. Watching him from across the room, Yusuf is struck anew by how much Nicolò has changed and yet how easily Yusuf’s eye finds him. He carries himself lighter on his feet, stronger in the set of his shoulders--his stance is always one of readiness--but there is still...a unique uncertainty to him. Nicolò watches the people around them as if in constant, careful study, as if comparing their movements and behavior to his own. Given his history, he must have spent a great deal of his time contemplating the members of his flock; without that crucial piece of context, however, and now in combination with the changes to his physicality, he radiates the unsettling strangeness of an alien being, something just slightly to the left of human. His pale skin doesn’t help, and more than one person casts him nervous glances. 

When Nicolò reaches Yusuf’s table, he cocks his head. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” Yusuf pushes the bowl of stew and crust of bread across the table. He’s fished out and eaten the squishy berries and sopped up most of the sauce with his own crust, the result of which is--he hopes--a relatively inoffensive meal of lamb, root vegetables, and bread. 

It still elicits a long moment of stillness as Nicolò looks back and forth between Yusuf and the food. “What?” Yusuf asks, resisting the urge to check the bowl for any other potential hazards. Nicolò makes no reply but sits and begins to eat. The hubbub of the tavern continues around their small table and Yusuf nurses his wine, trying to neither interrupt Nicolò’s meal with conversation nor make him self-conscious by watching as he takes small, precise bites. 

Nicolò does pause at one point to murmur, “Thank you.” When Yusuf glances over, his eyes stay on the food and he resumes his steady pace of eating. 

“You’re welcome.”

The lamb and most of the vegetables disappear before Nicolò sets to work on the bread, tearing it into small pieces. Yusuf gauges this to be sufficient nutrition consumed and tells him in a low voice. “I may have found him.”

Nicolò’s eyes rise to his and he swallows. “Already?”

“It’s not a big village. He left word with the tavern owner and has been staying in a house just outside of the gates. Of course, that could be the tavern owner sending us to meet a clan of bandits for a cut of our purses, but she knew he was from al-Mahdīyah. And if there are bandits, we at least know where to find her to exact revenge.”

Unspoken is the possibility that she has already sent _Muhammed_ to meet those bandits. Which--Yusuf doesn’t exactly know what will happen, then. He gazes down into his cup. What will he do, if Muhammed has been killed in this place? Even thinking the question makes his mind slide out of his grasp into choppy waters. 

There had been a man--in al-Mahdīyah Yusuf had passed into a Banu Sulyam camp at night like a breeze made of death, stealing breath from sleeping lips. He hadn’t even fought with honor, had simply gone from man to man cutting their throats. Only one had woken in time to escape the same fate and fled out over the sand; Yusuf had chased him down, _grateful_ to encounter any kind of resistance, and leapt on the man’s back, stabbing him viciously and repeatedly. Except then the man’s hood had fallen away and in the moonlight he’d just been a boy.

Something touches Yusuf’s knuckles. He looks down and realizes that it’s Nicolò’s bowl. He’s fairly certain that it wasn’t so close to his hand a moment ago, but he didn’t hear it move and Nicolò’s eyes are on the bread crust in front of him. 

Shaking away the creature he became in the desert, Yusuf drinks his wine. There is no one to notice him do so, here, and if they did, what of it? He is no one, now. 

It is mid-afternoon by the time they emerge from the tavern. The streets remain a flood of people: refugees moving in one direction, opportunists heading in the other, and irritated local farmers trying to make their way through the crowd. Slipping through the east gate, Yusuf squints ahead at the rolling hills before them, dotted with sheep and goats. A low stone wall marks the edges of some wealthy man’s land, and leads up a nearby hillside to a low stone building. 

Beside him, Nicolò is a silent presence, waiting while Yusuf gazes at the little shepherd’s hut built into the hillside so close that the ground seems to half swallow it. Eventually Yusuf gets his feet moving again. 

It’s a matter of minutes to scale the hill. The shepherd’s hut is clearly occupied: it’s door stands open and several paces outside is a pile of refuse, dirt and dust and torn clothes and a mildewed bedroll. Likely someone intends to try to burn it once it is dry enough.

The interior of the house is dark and cool. Yusuf had not even noticed the heat until he steps out of it. Here there is a fresh bedroll, neatly laid by the fireplace. A second doorway on the far side of the room stands open as well and Yusuf moves in that direction on instinct

Stone steps lead up onto an elevated garden connected to the hillside that has turned fallow and overgrown with neglect. The smell of earth hangs heavy, rich enough to almost taste. Seated amongst the trailing vines with his hands in the dirt is a young man who looks up at their approach. 

Muhammed’s big dark eyes widen and he scrambles to his feet. “Yusuf?” he breathes, joy sparking through his whole being. He is--Wallah, he is as beautiful as ever, but what was once delicate and lovely has matured into the full bloom of manhood, complete with a strong jaw and a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. The look in his eyes is much the same, though, so open and unguarded. He was never one to hide his mind or heart.

Belatedly, Yusuf realizes that he is and has always been attracted to a very specific type of man.

Muhammed hastens into his arms, embracing him with unexpected strength. Like his sister he is still relatively small but at some point in the last--Wallah, nine years? Ten? However long it has been since Yusuf last saw him, he has grown into the spread of his shoulders. 

He is talking, too, as exuberant as Yusuf remembers. “I hardly believed it when I got Khalida’s letter, she did not say anything directly of course but she made me believe something terrible had happened to you, and oh, I have been so worried. But here you are now!”

“Here I am,” Yusuf confirms. Muhammed pulls back a little, resting his palms against Yusuf’s ribs, and looks him in the face, his eyes roaming. Yusuf cannot begin to imagine what he sees there. Eight-maybe-nine years of age, at least, but it is the thought of him glimpsing any of the last, uncountable two years that has Yusuf averting his gaze. When they parted, he had still been fumbling his way through his father’s business, reliant on his fucking uncle for advice and better versed in the kind of poetry that would draw in a lovely, lively creature like Muhammed. 

Now...Yusuf thinks that blood, not poetry, might fall from his mouth if he parts his lips.

When he says nothing, Muhammed asks, “Is she here? Did she come with you? She said you are married now.” Yusuf does not think he imagines the slight reproach coloring Muhammed’s words. He had never liked the idea of Yusuf marrying his sister, blithely assured that they could continue on being lovers without anyone objecting. Even after Mennad’s violence had turned physical, forcing Yusuf to intervene, Muhammed had clung to the idea that they could simply disappear together; he had begged Yusuf to come with him to Baghdad, an impossibility with Yusuf’s uncle circling his father’s mercantile empire, ready to swoop in and take over at a moment’s notice. 

Muhammed is still talking. “Of course she wouldn’t have, it would have been much too dangerous. Did you come through the infidel state? Were you attacked there at all? Are you all right?”

“I’m all right,” Yusuf lies. Actually, he’s not even sure if it is a lie. His body has healed perfectly well. It has been almost two years since al-Quds and not a day has left its mark on him. It is only his treacherous mind that remembers, now. Muhammed is still studying him, his head tilted slightly to one side and a frown touching his brows. Wallah, he is so young. He seems so much younger now than he had at seventeen, when they’d first grown close, or maybe it is Yusuf who has aged in ways his body denies. 

“Khalida is on Cypros,” he says, gathering himself. “We were not sure if you had received the letter or not, or if--well, we did not know. We came through Latakia well enough except for a few pirates.”

“We?”

“Yes, we--this is--”

Yusuf turns and cuts short, because Nicolò isn’t standing behind him. They had entered the house together, but when they ascended the stairs onto the rooftop garden, Yusuf had traveled first up the narrow passage and been so preoccupied with catching sight of Muhammed that he hadn’t thought to note the presence--or absence--of footfalls behind him. 

Now, Nicolò isn’t anywhere to be found.

It’s like accidentally stepping off a cliff’s edge: the lurch of sudden imbalance, the instinctive terror, and then the freefall accompanied by a surge of sensation in his chest. Vaguely he is aware of Muhammed asking him something, but the rest of his attention is fixed solely on scanning the world about him as he descends back down the staircase into the house and its dusty collection of furnishings. Now that he looks closer he can see where Muhammed has been industrious: the floor is swept and cobwebs have been cleared from several corners. 

Nicolò does not wait for him there and something like panic seizes Yusuf’s chest. The clawed animal in him, so close to the surface now, rears up and digs in its talons. He rushes from the house back out into the sun, his eyes scanning the hillsides in both directions and seeing nothing but sheep. Where the fuck could he have gone? Did God just reach down and pluck him from existence? How can Yusuf--he will be alone with dust, already he feels himself starting to unravel--

Through a gap in the stone fence to his left he sees movement and he barely thinks before vaulting himself over the fence onto Nicolò’s back.

Nicolò rolls with the blow instinctively, drawing a knife as he twists around and gets Yusuf between his legs, pinning his arms in place. His face is blank and calm with calculation, but once he actually sees Yusuf, he blinks in obvious confusion.

Yusuf does not give him the opportunity to gather himself. “Where the _fuck_ do you think you’re going?!”

Nicolò doesn’t answer or move for a long moment, his legs still wrapped tight around Yusuf’s arms and chest. The position means they’re lying tangled together in the dirt but Yusuf couldn’t possibly give less of a shit, he is too angry for anything else. Anger is easier; anger covers up the earlier moment of abject terror. 

“I thought to examine the house,” Nicolò says at length. 

“Why?”

“In case there are--enemies.” 

“What fucking enemies?” Yusuf asks. “Do the sheep hide spears in their wool? Do the crows threaten an arrow volley?”

Nicolò’s face passes through several contortions, after which he grits between his teeth, “I wanted to give you space.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Because you are lovers!” Nicolò snaps, and Yusuf stills between his knees. “Or you were lovers, and I thought you’d want a--fucking moment of _privacy_ to greet one another.”

From above them, Muhammed calls in Arabic, “Yusuf? Are you...all right?”

He’s standing up near the wall above the ditch--the ditch that leads down to a tunnel below the hill that, okay, if Yusuf had noticed that, he would have been suspicious of where it led and what awaited them at the end of the tunnel, too. Likely naught but a storage space, but he was the one who mentioned bandits earlier. It’s Nicolò who answers, tearing his eyes away from Yusuf. “All is well. Hello, I am--one moment, please.” 

He squirms awkwardly away from Yusuf and clambers to his feet, sheathing his knife as he does so. He has several of them, it seems. “I am Nicolò di Genoa,” he says in Arabic, bowing as he presses a hand to his chest. “Please forgive me for the rudeness of my introduction, I was--”

“How the fuck did you learn Arabic?” Yusuf demands, climbing to his feet.

“From you, you asshole,” Nicolò snaps.

“You didn’t speak that well when I left you.”

“Well, I learned!” 

They pass several moments glaring at one another before Yusuf recollects himself. Muhammed. Yes. “I’m sorry. This is--”

“Preoccupied,” Muhammed interrupts. “Yes, I can see that. Hello, Nicolò di Genoa. Please meet me in the house, I will make some tea.”

He disappears over the stone wall. Bowing his head, Yusuf curses. 

Nicolò asks, “Why did you do that?” 

_Why the fuck do you think?_ Yusuf wants to reply, but how would Nicolò even know what to think? After their parting in Balarm, Yusuf could not fault him for keeping his distance, but now he lacks the words--words, which have always been his allies--to explain why Yusuf turned around to find Nicolò’s absence and was immediately plunged into a vast well of fear.

Instead he marches back up towards the house, turning periodically to make sure that Nicolò is still following. 

He walks into the front door then just...stands there, watching Muhammed move around the room gathering herbs to cook them some tea. Once or twice Muhammed glances over, his eyes briefly landing on their faces before they bounce away again. Yusuf can’t help but wonder what Muhammed sees.

Nicolò stands near the wall and says nothing, so eventually Yusuf forces himself to ask Muhammed about the herbs, the tea. When did polite conversation escape Yusuf’s abilities? As a merchant it’s his bread and butter--or it was, anyway. 

God, he loved Muhammed once. Looking at him now, it’s hard to imagine. Yusuf had been older, yes, some eight years, but even now he is...well, inside his heart he is still only eight years older, but to look upon his body he stopped aging two years hence. His mind, though--it remembers al-Quds, Sicilia, the desert. It has died a few dozen times and been reborn, and Yusuf cannot guess how many years lie in each death, how much time the agony and pain fill within him.

He did love Muhammed, once. Looking at him now…what can he know of Yusuf’s life? He was younger, yes, even when Yusuf was...even before Yusuf died at al-Quds, but now the sight of him makes Yusuf feel as if his bones are withering on the spot, shrinking into himself with the ravages of age, when age will never touch him. This, he thinks, must have been what Andromache meant to tell him. What can one person give him? A lifetime? Sooner or later he will be alone and what is the point of denying the truth of that? Muhammed will die long before Yusuf can leave him, as will Khalida, and Abu, and everyone he has ever known. 

Well. Not quite everyone.

“Are you well?” Yusuf blurts out.

“Yes,” Muhammed says. “I thank you for bringing me word of my sister.”

It is something deeply impersonal, the kind of thing you would say to a fucking actual messenger paid in coin to tell you deep and terrible truths. Yusuf cannot abide that, not remembering the things he does, so he crosses to the fireplace, where Muhammed is stirring a fragrant pot of water, and rests a hand on Muhammed’s still-delicate jawline. He is so much shorter. It makes Yusuf smile. 

“Don’t speak to me like that,” Yusuf tells him.

“How should I speak to you?” Muhammed asks, sounding honestly uncertain. His eyes dart to the side, which is the only way that Yusuf knows that Nicolò has slipped out of the room again. A thrill of panic races up the insides of Yusuf’s chest, but he makes himself stay. Muhammed deserves this much. 

He lets go of Muhammed’s jaw. “Khalida is in Cypros. I want to take you there, to meet her.”

Muhammed has stopped stirring the tea. He is watching Yusuf’s eyes closely. “All right,” he says. 

“I loved you,” Yusuf tells him. It sounds like something written on a tomb of the dead, a fact long written down that has nothing to do with them both, here, in this place and time. 

Muhammed laughs softly. “Well, since that is in the past tense, I will infer the rest if you don’t mind. Is he--I was going to ask if he is good to you, but you just tackled him to the ground and he didn’t stab you even though he very clearly wanted to, and I also won’t say that I’m very, very glad that he just walked out, because that man is _unnerving as shit_.”

The tension around them snaps and Yusuf throws his head back, laughing. “By God, he is, he is. I know. It’s in the eyes.”

“Oh, so he’s always like that, is he? How did he woo you, by standing in the courtyard of your house and staring at your window for three nights in a row?” 

“Be gentle.” Yusuf sits on the stool near the fireplace, an arm’s length away. “He was a priest in the Catholic faith before we met. It has left him...ill-equipped for company.”

Muhammed shoots him a skeptical look, his mouth pursed. Can they do this? Sit and talk as two friends? God, he prays that it can be so. Neither he nor Khalida owe him anything and he can make them no promises, not the kind he foolishly made to Khalida when he took her as wife, but it would hurt terribly to lose them. 

As with Khalida, he chooses the direct path forward and says, “I killed Mennad. I will not equivocate and say that I had to--he tried to kill me, did kill my family, and likely would have killed or harmed Khalida if he had caught her, but there might have been other methods of seeing us to safety that did not involve his death. I didn’t look for them.”

Muhammed sighs, stirring the teapot. It smells soft and fragrant. “Well, what do you expect me to say about that? Shall I condemn you for doing what I never had the courage to do? He was my older brother and I loved him, but he deserved everything that came his way, so if you’re laboring under some sense of guilt on my behalf, please don’t. What did Khalida say when you told her?”

“Much the same. She is very much looking forward to seeing you, again. After you left, Mennad had her married off to Nasir al-Fasih.”

“That old goat! Did you kill him, too?”

The telling of Yusuf’s path from al-Qayrawān to here takes some time, even the edited version. Yusuf mentions nothing of his past deaths and rebirths; certainly, Muhammed will find out from Khalida, but a tension is winding tighter in Yusuf’s gut. The front door stands open a bare two inches and through the gap he can very clearly see Nicolò in the distance, seated on a half-crumbled stone wall, facing away from the house. His back is straight and unmoving. 

He sits there until Yusuf leaves the house and approaches; only then does he slip off the wall to his feet, all without so much as glancing in the direction of Yusuf or the house or Muhammed standing in the doorway to watch them leave. 

The trouble is: Yusuf knows him too well, now. Even aside from the time they spent in each other’s close company, aside from those precious, golden days in Balarm--and were they really so few?--Yusuf has lived inside Nicolò, seen through his eyes, tasted with his mouth, felt the breaking and remaking of his body. The cant of Nicolò’s shoulders right now looks very much the same as when he was eating porridge or when he let that prostitute in Balarm take him to bed or when he offered himself to Yusuf on board the _Alqarsh al-Abyad_.

He says nothing, though, as they walk back towards the village. It is dusk, the sun lingering only on the hilltops around them and shadows growing long in the space between. A gentle stillness hangs in the air and Yusuf keeps his voice low out of deference. “It would be best if we travel back to Latakia with as much speed as is possible. Before long the cotton harvest will flood the port, and passage will become that much more expensive.”

Nicolò says nothing and when Yusuf glances sideways, his companion’s eyes are on the ground ahead of them. Yusuf chews at the inside of his cheek. He tries, “I am sorry for leaping on you like that. I turned around and did not know where you were, and I feared…”

He trails off. He feared a world without Nicolò. It was not quite a fear of loneliness, for Andromache and Quỳnh exist and are probably fighting and fucking their way across Frankish territory right now, judging from the dreams he’s had. But Nicolò is--

“You don’t need to apologize,” Nicolò says, derailing his thoughts. “I would not leave while you still had use of me, but given my behavior in the past, your doubt is very understandable.”

They are walking down a hill, passing into the shadows between Muhammed’s temporary refuge and the city walls. “I don’t,” Yusuf starts to say. But yes, he does have use of Nicolò. His presence allowed them to pass through Crusader-held territory relatively unimpeded, and will hopefully assist them in the same on their path back to Latakia. Nor can he protest that he does not distrust Nicolò. To love someone so deeply and then discover that all along, something about Yusuf had been so disgusting, so repulsive, that Nicolò had attempted to alter it...that is hard to forget, or forgive. 

That does not change the tightening screw of tension in Yusuf’s chest. At first he cannot even understand what he is feeling or why, but then, sharply, it comes to him: once he is done _using_ Nicolò, he will leave. He will go to Crete, or somewhere else to chase his own personal concept of redemption. 

“And is that all you want in life,” he asks, his whole mouth tasting bitter, “to be _useful_?”

Nicolò shrugs. “God did not make me to want. God made me to serve.”

Yusuf’s feet falter as he recognizes the path set before them. The small and cold life that Nicolò imagines for himself...what he thinks he deserves, when Yusuf knows firsthand that he is capable of so much more, that he _deserves_ so much more, despite his faults. Maybe because of them, for what is his tortured devotion to the Christian church except a blackmail note for his own life? 

“We are--you and I are made the same,” Yusuf says. Ahead of him, Nicolò slows to a halt as well, though he stays facing away from Yusuf. “That is what Andromache told me and I believe her. Will you look me in the eye and tell me that I am not meant for anything except what use others can make of me?”

“No.” 

“Then you think that, despite us being born in the same moment, dying and returning together--we are somehow different?”

“Yes.” Nicolò turns to face him, meeting his eye. He is breathing as if an invisible wound pains him. “You are--you’re not like me. None of you are like me. God made you to fight but He made me to serve.”

Yusuf can’t help but laugh. “Wallah. The arrogance of you. You’re immortal, but still you have to be _special_ among us?”

“That isn’t why!” 

“No? Look me in the eye and tell me again that God made you to never want anything.”

Nicolò sucks in his teeth in a way that should absolutely not be adorable. He’s actually grown out his hair long enough that he has to tie it back. The front still hangs shaggily around his face; it’s not his worst look. “God did not make me to want,” he says with absolute conviction.

Yusuf takes a step towards him. Nicolò’s eyes widen and he takes a half-step back, then another when Yusuf relentlessly pursues, backing Nicolò up against a convenient stone pillar that marks the edge of the village. It reminds Yusuf of the ship, when he had shaken off his bloodlust enough to see Nicolò standing before him, slim, beautiful, and gentle with his care. The response is very similar: he presses his mouth to Nicolò’s lips, opening to devour him and demanding a response in kind. 

Nicolò gives it. Wallah, he gives it, yielding instantly with the abandon of a virgin, which Yusuf knows firsthand he is not. This meeting still has the same wanton intensity and blind trust that Nicolò granted him in Balarm, and yes, Yusuf has had his share of virgins, Muhammed among them, but Nicolò has always been something a little different. Not someone who chose Yusuf to be his first but who chose Yusuf to be his _only_ , the only person in the world known to him in that way. 

When he draws back, Nicolò has been torn open, no longer carved into a small piece. He is expanding with every inhalation, his shoulders rising and his eyes opened wide.

“Liar,” Yusuf accuses softly then steps back. 

It takes a long moment for Nicolò to recollect himself. Yusuf does not give him a reprieve and watches him the whole while, patient in a way that he is not frequently. He can be patient for this; he has all the time in the world.

Once he gathers himself, Nicolò avoids Yusuf’s eyes and leads them back into Aleppo. At this time of early night, it is an uneasy place, full of anxious travelers trying to find a place to lay their heads without fear of having their throats cut during their sleep, even if it be in the small mud and thatch huts scattered just inside the city walls, where the beggars live. 

To Yusuf’s horror, Nicolò leads him into one such hut. It is a small room, nothing but a window, four walls, a roof, and the floor, not even a bed but a couple of thin pallets.

“Oh no,” Yusuf says, looking around. “No, absolutely not.”

When he looks up, he is just in time to catch Nicolò making a strange gesture with both his hands. As if he were reaching for Yusuf but stopped himself halfway. He says nothing, just stares with his pale eyes. 

The screw in Yusuf’s heart twists anew and he steps forward without thinking, letting Nicolò’s palms find his shoulders again. The kiss, when it comes, is barely that, just Nicolò clumsily pressing their mouths together. 

Distantly, someone is playing music. A stringed instrument, played with skill.

In the too-warm dark of their hut, Yusuf takes Nicolò by the jaw and tilts his head to one side, trying to gentle him. It does not work: he pulls at Yusuf with his hands even as he presses closer with his body, as if he were trying to crush Yusuf against his own chest. There is a certain artistry to his movements that was absent before, and while Yusuf knew this full well from his dreams it is still painful to realize firsthand that Nicolò has learned from the touch of another. 

The bitterness does not rest long on his tongue, though, for it becomes painfully clear that what pleasure Nicolò has learned was decidedly one-sided. The recognition of it makes Yusuf ache and sets him afire. Their feet tangle and Yusuf barks a laugh as they tumble to the floor of the hut. Nicolò, though, is not laughing. When he sees Yusuf looking, he turns his face away, his shoulders hunched, as he has done before.

“Shhh,” Yusuf whispers, hooking his leg over Nicolò’s hip. It brings them closer together but also gives him better leverage. Nicolò’s sex is hard against his hip and Yusuf rocks them both, gently, no intention behind it except acknowledgement, pleasure and comfort without urgency. Nicolò jolts against him, thrusting his hips once before he tries to rip himself away; Yusuf uses his better leverage to hold him in place, soothing him with gentle touches. “Shhh, Nicolò, va tutto bene, lo prometto.”

That inspires a different kind of tension, and Nicolò pulls away far enough to stare at him. “Did you learn zenéize?” 

Yusuf laughs, brushing Nicolò’s cheek with his knuckle. “A little. Can we get up from the floor? Or better yet, leave this hovel and find a better place to stay? I would not take you in the dirt like an animal, my love.”

“Don’t call me that.” Nicolò grinds his face into the packed earth underneath them. “Fuck you. Don’t taunt me with such things.”

“I’m not.” Yusuf kisses Nicolò’s angular jaw, his cheekbone, his neck. “I would not.”

It takes some time to coax Nicolò up, and they curl on one of the thin pallets together. The setting sun lays like an orange cat along the archway, stretching across the floor as distantly, the Maghrib prayer begins. 

Nicolò squeezes his hand. “You should pray. If you want to.”

“Later. Do you know the Salat now?”

“I learned it from you.”

Now that the initial rush of desire--and, strangely, relief--has passed, Yusuf wavers in his intentions. He absolutely meant his request to depart from this wretched place--they don’t even have a _door_ \--but as he takes a breath he finds his own desire tempered by apprehension. So much lies between them...and so much lies _before_ them. In the desert, that had unraveled him: there, an eternity had awaited them, but not them, only Yusuf. Alone, no dreams to help him find a companion. It would be torment, to be so alone in the world, and Yusuf has spent a year apart from this man, his monster, his other, his killer, his victim, trying to hide from this truth. They are a serpent swallowing its own tail, as Quỳnh said. Nicolò knew, and in Yusuf’s absence he had starved. They both had. 

But to simply ignore the wrongs of their past and cleave together out of desperation and fear of an endless future...no. It would poison the affection they still feel for one another, bit by bit, year by year. Once, Yusuf would have been able to seal away that rage and hurt, but he. He is not.

“I’m not the man I was,” he says aloud. It isn’t the right place to start, not at all, but he is--well, he isn’t the fucking man he once was, is he? He’s someone who stares into space in a tavern, imagining the bloody murder of all its occupants. 

What did Andromache say? _It will find you._ He shivers and closes his eyes, imagining it crawling across the ground towards him. 

Fingers close around his. When he can bring himself to open his eyes, Nicolò meets his gaze with absolute steadiness. 

Somewhere, a woman’s voice has joined the music, rising and falling.

Yusuf blinks, feeling himself slide just to the side of himself. He has done that far too often recently and each time he fears what he will become in his own absence. He grips Nicolò’s hand the way a drowning man will clutch a tree root along the riverbank. “Did you--you came to find me, in the desert.”

“Yes.”

“Did you sing to me?”

“Yes. I am sorry.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know what else to do. You had stabbed me twice and I didn’t even know which way to walk--”

“No, no. Why are you sorry for singing? It was beautiful.”

“It was a hymn. I did not wish to...I know you object to my faith.”

“I don’t object to your faith. Only the prospect of having your faith forced on me, or anyone else.”

 _That_ is probably where they should start, but neither of them seem inclined to open the wound further. Instead they sit hand-in-hand while the shadows grow longer around them, neither able to speak but both unwilling to move apart. 

It is Nicolò, of course, who finally breaks the silence. Yusuf can acknowledge that Nicolò is the braver of the two of them, if only because he has no care for himself. “I have told you that when I was young, I frequently went without food. I had no family, at least none who wanted me, and when I was perhaps thirteen years old, I became horribly sick.” His eyes lift and he draws breath, sharply, as if for a moment he forgot how. “I was so tired I could barely walk. It was raining and I sheltered under the eave of a roof. I think I died there. That was when I first saw you.

“I know it was you. You were young, a few years older than me, and I watched you draw water from a well at the foot of a great, barren tree.”

A well below a tree--it couldn’t be, but they have already lived through so many impossibilities. Yusuf asks, “What color was the tree?”

Whatever response Nicolò expected, it was clearly not this; but he answers, “White, like bone.”

Wallah. “You did see me. That was the tree outside my--the home where my grandmother lived. How? How did you see that, and I did not see you?”

“I don’t know. I think, maybe, because you did not die with me I did not stay dead. I lived beyond that night and I--I thought it a vision of the young Christ.”

He says it with such bleak amusement, trying to make a jest of the whole thing even while his hand twists in Yusuf’s fingers, seeking to escape. Yusuf holds him tight, thinking back to that day on the beach, when they had both washed in the ocean after the slaughter of Ashkelon. Nicolò had looked at his face and called him by the name of his god-child; at the time, Yusuf had thought him merely delirious, but if Nicolò had seen that vision of him as a child, he had already spent years thinking of Yusuf as his god.

“And then you joined the church,” he realizes. Nicolò had followed his church all the way to al-Quds and the slaughter there, and...and Yusuf. 

He refuses to even consider that all of it--the slaughter, the devastation, the destruction of that beautiful city--served merely as a means to bring the two of them together, but he cannot deny that they did meet in the midst of that horror, and if Nicolò saw a vision of him before any of that had happened...Wallah, why did God not simply guide him south to al-Qayrawān, in that case? 

So many questions. So few answers, if Andromache and Quỳnh can be believed.

The forced amusement has fled Nicolò’s expression. He reaches into his tunic with the hand not still tangled with Yusuf’s and pulls out the beaded necklace that he holds whenever he prays. Holding it in his palm, he rubs his thumb brushes over the distorted, tortured figure of ‘Isa. “The man who helped me become a priest gave me this. It sounds foolish but when I was young I wanted so badly to comfort Jesus. In every icon and painting, He looked like He was in so much pain--even in the pictures of His resurrection. They told us that when we die, we will be with Christ in His perfect love, and I thought that would be good, to be with Him so that I could...do something to make Him less sad. That’s why I took the cross.”

“You went to fight in Jerusalem to make your god less sad?” Yusuf squeezes his hand as he speaks so that Nicolò will hear the gentle jest. 

“I went to Jerusalem to die. They tell us that to die is to be with God, and I--the only time in my life I had ever felt like I could be loved was a vision in an alleyway, but it wasn’t God at all. It was you.”

“For fuck’s sake.” Turning, Yusuf drags Nicolò against his chest and kisses his angular jaw, his cheek, his ear. Nicolò won’t unbend or turn to face him so Yusuf curls around him as best he can, hiding his own tears in the back of Nicolò’s neck. “You break my heart, Nicolò.”

The music rises and falls until the Maghrib prayer ends and the swell of conversation resumes around them, drowning out its melody. The tavern is not far from their makeshift dwelling and Yusuf already fears they will be up half the night listening to drunks, irritable travelers, and even more irritable horses. “Was there truly not one other single place to stay in this wretched place?” he asks, his voice sounding uneven and clogged to his own ears.

“No. I did look. If you would prefer, you--I am sure Muhammed would not mind. It would be quieter.”

“And would you come with me, and actually stay the night?”

“If you asked it of me, yes.”

And he would lie there the entire night suffering like his god-child, because that is how he has been made to believe he might be worthy of love. Yusuf wants to strangle him--no, _no_ , Wallah, he won’t do that, he won’t hurt Nicolò ever again, he may never escape the violence that stalks him, he may drown in bodies up to his neck, over his head, but he will never, ever hurt this man again. 

“Yusuf?” Nicolò shifts in his arms, touching him. Yusuf realizes he’s gone rigid while still gripping Nicolò by the shoulders. He exhales slowly, trying to relax. It’s getting dark and they don’t even have a candle inside the hut. Nicolò is become a shape to him that he feels more than he sees. 

“Come on,” he says, rising to his feet and immediately bumping his head on the roof of the hut. “Wallah. I would rather stay the night in the wilderness.”

“As you wish.” Nicolò stands.

As they leave the city, a pair of grubby children are lighting torches near the gate. Nicolò greets them gently. “You are young to be guards.”

“Our father is the town guard,” the bolder of the two reports, eyeing them both suspiciously. “He is asleep right now but he will take up his spear soon and watch this gate through the night.”

“That is kind and honorable of him. I will pay him proper deference should I see him.” 

They continue on their way. “Wait,” the child calls after them. “You don’t want to go out there! There’s wolves about, and Mama says that someone said they saw a bear not long ago.”

Nicolò makes no reply so Yusuf calls over his shoulder, “This one and I have no cause to fear wild things. Stay near the lights, little one, and sleep well.”

“Wait!” the child calls after them, but they do not pause, and pass out into the night together. 

A/N

-Yusuf’s usage of the word “catamite” is a period-accurate term for a boy involved in prostitution, but has a lot of iffy layers to it, not the least of which is the presumably young age of the boy in question. I do not endorse underage prostitution and nor does Yusuf, but it was a common occurrence in that time period. (And the modern age…)  
-The hymn that Nicolò sang in the desert was Divinum Mysterium, or “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” from the 11th century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_NEaYoPDDQ  
-My personal headcanon for Andomache, Quỳnh, and Lykon: they met in Alexander of Macedonia’s Persian campaigns. Lykon was a sea captain who was captured while sailing the Badda Cas or Red Sea. Once he met up with the girls, he wanted to go back home and see if any of his family were still alive; after that they tooled around sub-Saharan Africa for a bit--a bit being a few centuries--which is how Andromache knows about the Mega-Lake Chad (mentioned earlier in the fic). They then got involved in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and were actually on their way back towards India and the far east when Lykon died. When that happened, Andromache went into a deep depression and tried to withdraw from Quỳnh, who was having none of that and followed Andromache into Siberia. They then passed the next 400 years searching for mammoths--which Andromache remembers with great fondness--and riding around the Western Steppes before Yusuf and Nicolò were “born,” at which point they headed south to find the boys.


End file.
